Instant News in Social Media: Facebook to Become News Media Giant

The social media network Facebook is now set to grow into a news media giant: it has signed a deal with nine news media outlets, including the BBC, New York Times, NSC News, Buzzfeed and others, to directly run their news articles, photos and videos on its pages, rather than simply posting links to their pages, which take time to load.

Facebook is set to introduce a new service to its billion-plus audience: it will host the news articles of nine news media outlets on its servers, rather than simply posting links to their webpages, which take time to load.

Today roughly a billion people visit the social media network to chat and see what their friends are reading or streaming.

If you try to click on a posted link, it takes time to load: an average of eight seconds. Facebook says this is by far the slowest of its services.

The newly introduced service will be called Instant Articles and will provide the opportunity for news generators to create fast, interactive articles on Facebook, making the reading experience as much as ten times as fast as standard mobile web articles.

The network says that along with a faster experience, Instant Articles will introduce a suite of interactive features that will allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways.

“Zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting your phone. Watch auto-play videos come alive as you scroll through stories. Explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and even like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line,” it says in its posted statement.

The newly-introduced feature will give the media outlets the opportunity to reach out to a wider audience.

The media outlets that have singed on so far include: The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.