Facebook introduced Instant Articles last year. Instant Articles allow the publishers to create dedicated, interactive and feature-rich content which loads from within Facebook’s app, and, is hosted on Facebook. Until now, the Instant Articles opened from within Facebook’s app, but now, Facebook is bringing them to the Facebook Messenger as well.
Facebook’s Instant Articles are something which every publisher should take advantage of if they care about their readers. The Instant Articles look good and provide a great reading experience. Also, the articles are loaded from within the Facebook app so you don’t have to leave the Facebook app and read the article on the publisher’s website.
However, Facebook wants to enhance this experience further by bringing the Instant Articles to its Messenger app as well. Whenever the article link is shared in Messenger, a lightning bolt will appear on the top-right corner of the article preview which indicates that it’s an Instant Article. This helps users distinguish between an Instant Article and a normal article.
“Every month, more than 900 million people around the world communicate with friends, family members and businesses on Messenger, and that includes sharing informative and entertaining content from websites. Currently, links shared via Messenger load in a mobile browser, which can be a slow experience, especially in places where low connectivity is an issue. Now people can have the same fast, interactive experience reading Instant Articles in Messenger that they have in the Facebook app, and publishers can tell beautiful stories and reach their audiences through both Facebook and Messenger.” said Mr. Josh Roberts, Product Manager at Facebook.
As of now, the support is rolled out to Facebook Messenger for Android. iPhone users should expect to see Instant Articles in Messenger in the coming weeks.
