Instant Articles is the attempt Facebook to bring the news faster to users all over the world, the American company implementing this functionality in the Facebook mobile application installed in the terminals of hundreds of millions of people. Instant Articles for Facebook will give website owners the opportunity to create interactive articles directly in the social network, these being displayed much faster to users than in the case of loading a website through the mobile application developed by the company.
According to Facebook, loading a web page takes, on average, 8 seconds through the Facebook application, and Instant Articles will reduce that loading time because the articles would be saved directly in the company's servers. Practically, through Instant Articles, users no longer access the content creators' websites, but are still closed in the Facebook application to see the information.
As more people get their news on mobile devices, we want to make the experience faster and richer on Facebook. People share a lot of articles on Facebook, particularly on our mobile app. To date, however, these stories take an average of eight seconds to load, by far the slowest single content type on Facebook. Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as ten times faster than standard mobile web articles.
Instant Articles allows you to create interactive content with high-resolution photos that will change their appearance depending on the tilt of the screen, with video clips that start automatically while you scroll through the content, interactive maps and audio snippets are also available.
Basically, through Instant Articles, Facebook wants the various big or small publications to stop sending users to their own websites, but to keep everything active in its social network, users no longer having to leave the mobile application. Of course, this would seriously increase the rate of use of Facebook worldwide, but the problem is that the various content creators remain without users and implicitly without money.
Instant Articles also introduces a few new features that allow publishers to make their articles more interactive. You can tilt your phone to zoom in and explore high resolution photos. Auto-play videos will 'come alive' as you scroll through stories. You can also explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, as well as like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line.
To begin with, Instant Articles will be launched in partnership with a number of large publications from the US and Europe, the expansion of availability will be limited until the content creators will be convinced whether it is worth increasing the value of Facebook or not, decreasing theirs . Considering that Instant Articles is a function designed mainly for abroad, it will take some time until it reaches Romania.
