Facebook Instant Articles is the newest addition to Facebook. What is Facebook Instant Articles you might ask? Well, Facebook has given the opportunity for publishers to post their articles onto Facebook’s news feed. You can watch the cool video on the introduction which shows National Geographic teaming up with Facebook to create Instant Articles. The video explores how National Geographic has always tried to emphasize the visual aspect with their photos and will now take it to Facebook’s news feed. Instant Articles makes published articles easier to read and watch by making videos alive and interactive. The pictures and videos will now load 10 times faster than the average mobile website.
Let’s face it, if you click on an article and it takes forever to load, what are the chances you will wait for it? Probably very slim because you know you have more options elsewhere. This is where Facebook Instant Articles will come in to fix this issue.
Sounds interesting, but how does this affect your business? Let’s explore.
User Experience with Facebook Instant Articles
- Speed- The articles load instantly on your Facebook news feed.
- Easy to read- Instant Articles will take hard to read HTML and RSS feeds and scale them to your mobile devices, making an easier experience for the viewer.
- Picture movement- Users can touch the photo and move their mobile devices side to side to see the whole image.
How Facebook Instant Articles Creates A Better Visual Experience
- Animated maps- Instant Articles has created a 3D like map that is similar to google maps. You can zoom in and out of locations where the photos were taken.
- Image quality- The quality of the photos and videos being shown are capturing and vivid. The videos that play on auto-play show great detail and make the picture look crisp.
- Drive engagement- Facebook users can still like, comment and share the pictures, videos and articles with their friends just like any other post.
Now to the question everyone is asking. How will the publishers, like National Geographic, profit from this? If Facebook is making it easier for users to read news and get their social media fix on the same app, then why would we need to go to the publisher’s page, will that now be seen as a waste of time?
The Pros of Facebook Instant Articles
- Publishers will still control what is being published and how their business model will look. They will also be in control of their own analytics platforms.
- Facebook offers publishers to display their own ads and publishers would take 100 percent of the revenue from those ads.
- Facebook then will fill unsold spots and take 30 percent of the revenue from those ads, and the remaining 70 percent will go to the publishers.
The Cons of Facebook Instant Articles
There are some people who think Facebook Instant Articles could lead to some negative issues in the future. These issues stem from the fact that Facebook has been known to change their rules and change up the news feed whenever they choose in the past. If Facebook decides to change Instant Articles in the future, these potential changes could likely affect Facebook users and also the publishers of Instant Articles.
We will have to wait and see, but as technology moves forward we must be able to keep up with new developments and various social media trends.
Have you noticed Facebook Instant Articles in your newsfeed yet? Are you going to be using Facebook Instant Articles? Let’s discuss!
