Although vastly different in format, Facebook’s main competitor over the years has been Twitter. Its big advantage, which Facebook has never been able to surpass, has been the instant distribution of real-time news.

Starting Wednesday, select certain big-name publishers will commence publishing articles directly to Facebook. To start, these include The New York Times, National Geographic, NBC, The Guardian, The Atlantic, BBC News, BuzzFeed and German publishers Bild and Spiegel.

The main challenge Facebook is trying to solve is wait time. Although Facebook excels in having its users sharing articles, the loading of these are the slowest content type on the platform, taking an average eight seconds. With its new feature, however, Instant Articles, Facebook reports that the the mobile reading experience has been made up to ten times faster.

Several interactive features are included, such as auto-play for videos, high-resolution image zooming, in-line commenting or liking of certain parts articles, and interactive maps. Publishers will sell advertisements inside their articles and readers get a more seamless experience. An advantage for Facebook is that revenue sharing is involved and it should engage a more mature audience.

Its most recent earnings report, revenue was announced at $3.54 billion, or $20 million below what many investors had expected. However, this was mostly due to the strong U.S. dollar and it is nevertheless an almost 42 percent increase from last year.

Facebook’s growth continues. In just the last quarter, monthly active users grew by four percent and a robust 13 percent over the previous year. Facebook now boasts 1.44 billion total global users.