14 DAY TRIAL // As previously reported, Facebook announced that they are ready to host news content from online publications with a little help from a tool called Instant Articles.
This feature will allow publishers to push their content in the users’ News Feed, without them having to go to an external site to read the articles through.
Facebook also unveiled that they have concluded deals with some of the most relevant publications out there and the New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed and NBC are among the nine partners.
The company revealed that they are currently waiting more outlets to come forward and become involved in the program, as they want to offer users a greater variety of news to choose from.
It seems that Facebook has been working closely with the media outlets in developing the program, as they want to make sure that they feel safe about using it and that there is mutual gain on both sides.
And it is an advantageous move for the publications as well, given that they can draw some benefits from Facebook‘s impressive user base and secure more readers as a result of people sharing the articles on the social website.
In the blog post announcing the latest feature, Michael Reckhow, product manager for Facebook, assured news publishers that they won’t have to put up with any financial losses if they choose to use the program. They are given the option to either sell their ads in their articles and keep all the revenue or use Facebook’s Audience Network, meaning that they would have to share earnings with the social networking site, and that they would get 70 percent of the total amount.
What’s more, Facebook will share analytics with the outlets through tools such as comScore so that they can track data and get information on the traffic flow. And users can rest assured as the company said that publishers won’t have access to any of their personal information as only relevant data will be made available for the publications.
Interactive news reading for mobile users
Facebook says that mobile users will be able to access the news ten times faster than they did before when they would have to wait for the external page to load. Some of them would even give up mid-way through because they could not bear the delay while now they will be able to access the article in less than a second.
All they have to do is tap on the article and instead of being taken to a different website, they will be able to read the entire article and check out the images or the videos within the as well, which they can zoom or watch in full screen.
The feature has currently been made available for iOS only, but it is very likely that it will be launched on Android as well.