Six months after making it Live, Facebook has today rolled out Instant Articles in India. For this service, the company has partnered with publications like India Today, The Quint, Aajtak, Hindustan Times and The Indian Express. The users will now be able to browse crisp, feature-rich content from these publication partners.
The publishing partners for Instant Articles will make dedicated and feature-rich content that will be hosted by Facebook and will load within the app. As the won’t have to leave the app, the content loads faster.
Earlier, the feature was only available in the US and Western Europe on iOS platform. As of now, the company will be testing how different types of content is being consumed by the users in the Indian market. After the tests, it will roll out to more publishers in the coming months to scale up.
Andy Mitchel and Michael Reckhow, Product Manager for Instant Articles at Facebook, say that their goal is to create a platform for publishers to use it as a way to get their news out on FB. They claims that it’s a collaborative platform that offers great experience for publishers.
They also said that it takes an average of 8 seconds for a page to load on Facebook’s mobile app. Instant Articles uses technology in a way that articles load instantly, making the reading experience as much as 10 times faster than on the standard mobile web.
Along with a faster experience, Instant Articles introduces a suite of interactive features that allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways. Zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting your phone. Watch auto-play videos come alive as you scroll through stories. Explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and even like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line.
And while the user experience is all good, Facebook made sure to design the new feature keeping publishers in mind. Publishers can sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook’s Audience Network to monetize unsold inventory. Publishers will also have the ability to track data and traffic through comScore and other analytics tools.
