Facebook Improves the User Experience with Instant Articles

Opening an article you find on Facebook with your mobile device can be frustratingly slow, with an average loading time of 8 seconds causing some readers to abandon ship before the article appears. Facebook is trying to address load time issues as well as keep readers on their site with Instant Articles. Open to a select number of publishers to start, Instant Articles loads articles a reported ten times faster, and also allows users to utilize tools that zoom and tilt photos, auto-play videos, use interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and of course, like and comment.

Using Facebook's Instant Articles doesn't mean that publishers can't monetize their posts. They are able to keep the revenue from ads sold within their articles or open them up to the Facebook Audience Network. Publishers can also keep track of their stats using comScore.

Only iPhone users will be reaping the benefits of Instant Articles to start with. Facebook also announced that the first nine publishers in the program will be The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild. If you'd like to learn how to become a publisher yourself you can contact Facebook from this page and read their full announcement here.