Facebook launches Instant Articles for publishers

Facebook has launched Instant Articles, a new tool to allow publishers to create instant, interactive content for the platform.

Sharing articles is one of the more popular uses of Facebook, particularly on the mobile app. The eight-second load time made it the slowest content type on Facebook, and the development of Instant Articles means that the reading experience is now up to 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles.

How to monetise the articles will be left up to individual publishers, which include BuzzFeed, The Guardian, NBC, The Atlantic, BBC News, National Geographic and The New York Times. Publishers can sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook’s Audience Network to monetise unsold inventory.