In mid-April 2023, Instant Articles will no longer be available. Until then, you still have access to insights and monetization related to your Instant Articles. Since October 14, 2022, only existing partners have access to Instant Articles.
What is an Instant Article?
An Instant Article is an HTML document that loads very quickly in Facebook giving publishers the ability to tell rich stories in a branded and customizable article format that renders fast on mobile.
Instant Articles provides a faster, Facebook-native way to distribute the content publishers already produce for their own websites. Every article published as an Instant Article must be published on a news publisher’s website as well.
When posting Instant Articles to Facebook, publishers and readers link to articles just as they always have. Each Instant Article is associated with a URL link, so when a link is shared in Feed, readers on Facebook see the Instant Article version if it’s available.
Instant Articles work for any type of article, from daily coverage to long-form, in-depth features. Instant Articles are available for readers with iPhones and Android devices running the following software versions or above:
- iPhone Facebook for iPhone Version 30.0 and iOS 7.0
- Android Facebook for Android Version 57 and Android Jelly Bean
An Instant Article is an HTML document optimized for fast mobile performance, rich storytelling capabilities, branded design and customized visual display. Instant Articles use a standardized markup language (similar to XML) to apply styles and interactive functionality to a story.
This markup can be applied automatically, to enable automated publication of an entire content feed at scale. Alternatively, it can be applied manually to create bespoke stories that take full advantage of Instant Article capabilities and rich-media elements.
Instant Articles will not be automatically posted. Publishers should share articles on their Pages just as they always have.
Instant Articles are ranked in Feed by the same criteria that we use to rank standard articles on the mobile web. Feed ranks stories based on a number of factors, including the amount people interact with them and how much time people spend reading them.
Why Meta closed Instant Articles ?
“Currently less than 3 percent of what people around the world see in Facebook’s Feed posts with links to news articles,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
“And as we said earlier this year, as a business it doesn’t make sense to over-invest in areas that don’t align with user preferences,” it added.
The company is now giving news publishers six months to readjust their Facebook strategies.
The company once called itself a Fifth Estate and launched revamped News tab that included a dedicated local news section among other topics, including breaking news alerts.
Earlier this month, Meta announced it to shut down its newsletter product, Bulletin, for creators and writers by early 2023.
Meta said it will refocus resources from Bulletin to work on its discovery algorithm, which the company is building to take on the Chinese short-form video TikTok.
