Facebook launches its fast-loading Instant Articles in Asia

Facebook’s Instant Articles have reached Asia, the social network announced today. The company is rolling out a beta version of the service on iOS for select media in India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Instant articles are a way to present content from participating media within Facebook’s app, instead of the link taking you to the publisher’s site on your web browser. As you scroll down your news feed and tap on a link to an article shared by a friend, the article opens up in a clean, streamlined form, with hi-res images and auto-playing video.

Normally, articles on outside websites take an average of eight seconds to open from a link on Facebook – the company calls it “by far the slowest type of content” on the platform. Instant Articles is meant to cut that down by ten times, plus deliver the content to you in a nice-looking format.

Although it doesn’t work for every article a publisher posts on Facebook, the lightning bolt accompanying those posts that are Instant Articles drives that point home; who has time to wait for mobile browsers to load? Here’s a faster multimedia alternative, with things like interactive maps, audio captions, and in-line commenting on individual parts of the article – much like Medium.

Stick around

Fastest loading and prettiness notwithstanding, this is obviously a great way for Facebook to keep you within its environment for even longer. According to the Pew Research Center, 63 percent of users in the US get their news from the social network. It’s only natural for Facebook to want to keep those users from navigating away from its app when it’s time to read something.

When it comes to monetization, Facebook says publishers are still able to sell ads in their articles and hold on to the revenue. Alternatively, they can use Facebook’s Audience Network system, which allows advertisers to take advantage of Facebook’s ad targeting data – much like Google’s AdMob system. Publishers will still be able to use their analytics tools to track data and traffic.

Facebook is not the only internet gatekeeper to seek more control over where you get your content. Apple News follows a similar pattern of presenting the news in one app and in a nice format. Google, on the other hand, is much more concerned about keeping people out in the open internet where its own ad business lies. So it has come up with a publishing product called AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), designed to make the mobile web a lot faster, to eliminate those pesky eight-second delays.

Here’s a list of the media available on Instant Articles in Asia. More will be added as the service signs them on.

• India: Aajtak, Hindustan Times, India Today, The Indian Express, The Quint
• Indonesia: Kompas.com, Merdeka.com
• South Korea: SBS News
• Malaysia: Sin Chew Daily
• Philippines: ABS-CBN News, GMA Network, GMA News, INQUIRER.net, Rappler
• Singapore: The Straits Times
• Taiwan: Apple Daily Taiwan, Chinatimes.com
• Thailand: Kom Chad Luek
• Vietnam: WebTretho, VnExpress

Major publishers in the US that have signed on for Instant Articles include The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post.

Instant Articles is currently available for iPhone users, with an Android version expected to launch later this year, although a small public beta is available.