Facebook Instant Articles Expands on Android, Now has 25 Indian & 350 Global Publishers
Facebook Instant Articles, a recently launched feature of Facebook, where users can directly see the articles in their FB timeline and read simplified versions of articles without leaving the FB app has now expanded to over 350 publishers globally!
Launched in May of this year, Facebook instant articles was available only for iPhone users and was launched in beta with select 9 publishers including The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.
Today, Facebook announced that Instant articles will now be available to all Android users along with iPhone users. Facebook Users will be able to read thousands of instant articles from 350 worldwide publishers directly on their Facebook timelines.
Michael Reckhow, Product Manager at Facebook said, “We’ve been beta testing Instant Articles for Android with a small group of people on Facebook for several weeks, and as we saw on iPhone, the faster, richer reading experience inspires people on Android to share Instant Articles with their friends more often than they do with standard web articles.”
Indian Publishers for Instant Articles
Here are the list of 25 Indian publishers whose articles users can see directly on their Facebook timelines.
Aaj Tak, ABP News, Amar Ujala, DailyO, Dainik Bhaskar, Dainik Jagran, Divya Bhaskar, DNA India, Hindustan Times, IBN Live, IBN7 Khabar, iDiva, India Today, India.Com, Indian Express, Indiatimes, MensXP, Naidunia Jagran, NDTV, NDTV Khabar, Scoop Whoop, Scroll, The Huffington Post India, The Quint, Zee News
6 Unique Features of Instant Articles
a) Images on the news articles can be zoomed by just tilting the phone; this will consume even less time and improve the overall experience
b) As the user scrolls through the story, videos will be played automatically
c) Interactive maps on the news article will help the user to explore the content in a better way
d) Captions can be listened
e) The user can like and comment individual sections within the article
f) Publishers can monetize the content both ways: Either they can place their own ads or join Facebook’s Audience Network to monetize unsold space. ComScore and other analytics tools are integrated in the platform to track traffic and other details.
Publisher Monetization??
With Instant articles, users will NOT have to visit publisher website or app to read the articles. This obviously means that publishers will not be able monetize their content. Facebook has not said how they will compensate for the same or will the show ads within these articles and pay a share of ad earnings with publishers.
While Instant articles may be a great feature for users, for publishers it may end up reducing their revenues, unless Facebook compensates for the same.
We are trying to find out more on this, and we will let update as soon as we have something on it.
Facebook’s policies have been unfriendly towards publishers. I hope they change their policies at least from now on, and grow beyond a social network to support an ecosystem of publishers by sharing revenues.