Better News Access Coming to Facebook

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By: Jessica Cherok

Facebook is attempting to make it easier for you to read the news. This week, the social media giant is introducing Instant Articles, allowing news outlets to create interactive content specifically designed for the mobile News Feed.

Several organizations have already signed up, including the New York Times, BBC, Buzzfeed, and others. Instant Articles has the content hosted on Facebook’s servers, meaning users won’t have to wait for the content to load when clicking on the story.

This is good news for anyone who has been frustrated by how long it takes some articles to load, and ultimately giving up on accessing them. According to Facebook, without Instant Articles, it can take up to eight seconds for content to load; eight seconds being nearly an eternity on mobile.

Instant Articles is another improvement in immediacy that Facebook is trying to bring to mobile. Users expect near-instant access to mobile content.

According to a report published by the Pew Research Foundation, almost half of Americans use Facebook as their source for news. According to the study:

“Facebook is now a widely-used source for news about government and politics. Nearly half (48%) of the panelists say they accessed news about politics and government on Facebook in the past week, about as many as got news about these topics from local TV (49%).”

As more and more news outlets join Instant Articles, the number of users getting their news from Facebook may also grow.