Facebook New Feature 'Instant Article Program' Allows Publishers Easy Publishing

If a publisher wanted an article goes viral on social media, they needed to put the URL on their Facebook status. Now, using the new feature, they can publish their articles straight to FB.

On Wednesday, nine major publishers began publishing their articles directly on FB, namely the New York Times, Buzz Feed, NBC, The Atlantic, Spiegel Online, The Guardian, Bild, BBC News and National Geographic. Although there were nine who tried publishing articles by using the monetisation app, only BuzzFeed and NBC committed on using the product, according to Digi Day.

The reason why the biggest social media company created this new feature is for the convenience of users. It also aims to make publishing on the site faster. People usually share a lot of articles through a mobile app on Facebook. However, the sharing and reading articles from a mobile app might take a lot of seconds to load. With the use of Instant Articles, the loading of content and reading of stories will be faster.

Aside from the content loading and sharing convenience, the new feature will make users' reading experience come to life as they can zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting their phone. Additional features include the auto-play video, where video will play automatically as readers scroll the content, and an interactive map that includes audio captions.

According to the official Facebook blog , the new feature was designed for both publishers and readers. Publishers have a control on their stories and FB allows them to sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue. In order to check unsold revenue, they need to monetise Facebook’s Audience Network. And to check traffic and track data, they need to use ComScore and other analytics tools,

“Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models,” Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said.