Facebook ties up with 9 publishers to launch 'Instant Articles'

Instant Articles will let stories load more than 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles and will include content from nine different publishers

Facebook tied up with nine news publishers to launch "Instant Articles" that will let them publish articles directly to the social network's mobile news feeds. 

Instant Articles will let stories load more than 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles and will include content from publishers such as the New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic, Facebook said in a blog post on its website.

"Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models," said Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox.

To attract readers to tap on the posts, the publisher articles will have animated cover images, which wil also include an autoplay video format. Once a user taps on an article, he or she will be exposed to a host of diverse media formats, states Tech Crunch.

To enable this rich media such as tweet embeds, YouTube videos and audio captions in articles, Facebook has created a 'bridge' which will parse the HTML and RSS of the articles and convert them to Instant Articles, Tech Crunch reported.

The launch of Instant Articles highlights Facebook's foray into the news distribution business, which as happened slowly and steadily. This would create new revenue opportunities, reports The Verge.

The news publishers can either sell and embed advertisements in the articles and keep all of the revenue, or allow Facebook to sell ads.

Tech Crunch reported that if the publishers sell ads, then they get to keep 100% of the revenues. If Facebook were to sell ads via its Audience Network mobile ad network, the publishers retain 70% of revenues, while the social networking site would keep 30%. Furthermore, the publishers can promote and publish as many or as few articles as they want.

The Internet social networking company will also let the news companies track data and traffic through comScore and other analytics tools.

The other launch partners for Instant Articles are NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild, Facebook said.

If Instant Article proves to be successful, publishers could become very dependent on Facebook, a medium they have little control over. Valid though these concerns may be, it has not prevented big publications from signing up, reports The Verge.

Instant Articles is currently available only on iPhone's iOS.