Facebook ‘Instant Articles’ could debut this month

Facebook ‘Instant Articles’ could debut this month

Users will see full content from some publishers without ever leaving Facebook

Facebook is rolling out a new feature that will allow its users to see full news articles and videos from Buzzfeed, National Geographic, The New York Times and other publishers without ever leaving the Facebook site. The feature, called “Instant Articles,” could debut as early as this month, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The social media network already drives a huge amount of traffic to big web publishers. A Pew study from last year found that larger web publishers get roughly 60 percent of their traffic from Facebook referrals, according to the Journal. But Facebook is reportedly concerned about the amount of time these sites can take to load on mobile devices. Endgadget estimates that the loading process can take about eight seconds.

Apparently, this eight seconds is enough time for some users to give up on watching the video or reading the article entirely. Thus, Facebook’s plan to host the content natively.

Understandably, some publishers are wary about becoming even more dependent on the social media company for page views. To woo these folks, sources tell the Journal that Facebook is offering some special ad rates, including letting publishers keep 100 percent of the revenue from certain ads.

According to the report, Facebook is wiling to forgo ad dollars because the initiative is not intended to sell ads at all. Rather, the social media network hopes the resulting faster-loading content will convince users to stay on Facebook for longer periods.

The timing of the “Instant Article” launch is still slightly up in the air, as Facebook is reportedly still in negotiations with the launch partners mentioned above, as well as other publishers. So while the current expectation is sometime in May, the launch could be pushed back if negotiations hit a snag.

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