Instant Articles: Facebook it becomes a threat to the press? – Challenges.fr

The young boss of Facebook does not dream in media mogul, but news vendor of a new kind, able to always longer keep users on its global social network. Until now, when you click an item in your news feed, you were sent back to the Media site. This necessitated the opening of a new page which put an average of eight seconds to load on a smartphone. Eight seconds? Intolerable for the swift Facebook! The social network makes it a point of honor to pamper its users, more and more people to connect via their mobile, and to spare them frustration intermittent connections while traveling.

To achieve this, Facebook today launched an initiative, “Instant Articles,” which, as its name suggests, allows to list immediately the articles in full. No need to leave the Facebook app, articles are loaded automatically and additional features such as interactive maps and the ability to zoom on photos were also provided to enhance the experience of mobile users.

9 prestigious guinea pigs

Nine prestigious media have so far agreed to serve guinea pigs by making available articles in that form, the New York Times , Guardian and Spiegel . “I feel also a very keen interest the press publishers of French side,” says Laurent Solly, head of the tricolor subsidiary, which said it was in talks with several of them to run tests in France quickly.

When the project was leaked to the press last March, many media groups had expressed concern them who relied increasingly on social networks to reach their readers. Do not they risked losing control of their publications? Back to see traffic to their sites? And how would they be shared ad revenue?

For coax, Facebook showed credentials and untied the strings of the Exchange. The publishers therefore have a choice. Either they integrate their own advertisements in this new article format and retain all of the advertising income, they appeal to the authority that Facebook will donate 70% of their revenues.

An attractive proposition for publishing groups which are still struggling to monetize their content on mobile, but that is not set in stone. Both sides of the alliance with the repeated force: it is only a test. Either party may terminate the study when it sees fit.

Clémence Boyer ChallengeSoir