A lot of the buzz surrounding Facebook as of late is the launch of Facebook Instant Articles. This mobile-only platform is effectively raising the bar for content publishers by enabling you to create an incredibly rich, multi-layered approach to content that will amaze and engage.
Facebook Instant Articles are built on concepts borrowed from Facebook Paper, and perhaps the best thing about it is that it allows mobile pages to load a whopping 10X faster than normal mobile pages, providing a near “instant” experience. The visual aspect of these pages are truly amazing, with a lot of versatility, creativity and control built right in.
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But what can it do for me you ask? Well at the moment, it's in a testing mode with only 9 publishers as part of the trial. (The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild) Facebook wants to ultimately roll this out to anyone who wants to share stories, but that is not available just yet.
Some of the cool features of Facebook Instant Articles
- Want to put in embedded tweets, YouTube videos, photos, image galleries, videos and interactive graphics directly into the posts? Not a problem! They will even start directly up, increasing time on site and engagement.
- Need more detail? You can use the handy zoom feature to have a closer look into videos, images and maps.
- Like what you see? You can Like or comment on pages directly inside the app!
- Publish your own logos and Facebook Fan page follow buttons within the story.
- Need more stats? Your Google Analytics integrate nicely with the articles.
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While Facebook Instant Articles are only in Beta mode now, Facebook wants to eventually roll this out to anyone who wants to share stories on Facebook. Facebook is allowing publishers who post sponsored content (like Buzzfeed) to have that content shared. (About the only way anyone not associated with the aforementioned 9 publishers can get their own content on there at the moment)
Facebook's Instant articles will significantly change the way content is presented and viewed on the mobile web. It will set a new standard that will lift expectations of most any content published on the Web.