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Facebook enables Instant Articles on Messenger

Facebook Messenger for iOS will also roll out support for Instant Articles in the weeks to come.

Starting Thursday, July 14th, Facebook started rolling out Instant Articles for Facebook Messenger, it’s stand-alone messaging app. The initial roll-out will start with Android devices, but the feature will be added to the iOS version of Messenger in the coming weeks.

Browsing In The Fast Lane

Google developed Accelerated Mobile Pages HTML, or AMP HTML, in order to combat the increasing number of websites which load slowly due to how many elements are present in their design.

The open AMP HTML framework enables a far more lightweight design, lessening the burden of older machines, slower connections, and generally all devices using mobile data. Many and diverse publishers, companies, and industries adopted the AMP HTML framework.

Facebook’s Instant Articles

Facebook wants to be able to accommodate its users without them having to resort to additional extensions or browsers. As part of the effort, in 2015, the company set up the groundwork for Instant Articles.

The service enables the option for publishers to have Facebook host their website. Thus, Instant Articles guarantees almost no loading times for Facebook users. Accessing Instant Articles present in a Facebook News feed does not cause the browser to separately load the website.

The company also recently broadened access to the service, giving all publishers the opportunity to use it. Websites hosted with Instant Articles prove to be a popular choice among Facebook users. The company reports an over 20 percent increase in the popularity of the fast loading sites. They are on average also shared 30 percent more often.

The Speedy Messenger

Facebook Messenger will be getting updated with the Instant Article feature. Android users will be able to quickly and easily access the hosted sites.

Links to Instant Articles on Facebook Messenger are easily distinguishable thanks to a small lightning bolt sticker visible on the upper right corner of the article thumbnail. Clicking on Instant Articles will not cause the browser app to open and instead will make the website load in the Facebook Messenger app.

Facebook Messenger currently has over 900 million active users on both Android and iOS, ensuring quite the number of pageviews for any publisher interested in Facebook’s speedy service.

Image Courtesy of Facebook.

Google is not going to be working on every smartphone in the world, but they are going to make sure that your desired pages load faster on all smartphones.

Google: Pages Load Faster On All Smartphones

The race for world domination among internet giants is quite a challenge and with Facebook and Apple coming in from behind, Google decided that it’s time for some new partnerships and speed up smartphones. Not to worry, Google is not going to be working on every smartphone in the world, but they are going to make sure that your desired pages load faster on all smartphones.

The project is called “Accelerated Mobile Pages”, more commonly known as AMP. It is an open framework dedicated to making mobile web pages load faster than the ones we are experiencing nowadays. If you are wondering why this happening, it is because of Apple News or Facebook Instant Articles, which are both pushing for top notch mobile loading pages.

There is a great story unfolding behind the scenes when it comes to how everything should be optimized, but in order for everyone to properly understand what is happening, we decided to break it down into very simple words. Imagine that every site is a store with shelves. Right now, the shelves are considered as one piece, but optimizing them means that every shelf needs to be broken down into the “objects for sale”.

What Google wants to do is simply offer some tools that would make this “breakthrough” more accessible and make everything load faster.

At the same time, Google is very aware that ad blockers are on the rise, so this mechanism aims at killing ad blockers once and for all. What is the reason behind this? People might not want ad blockers that much if their pages are leading smoothly. We’re not saying that this is going to work 100%, but it is a good idea. Still, having this speed boost + an ad blocker could result in double speed right?

In case you are wondering who Google is partnering up with, we have some really big names on the list: Pinterest, LinkedIn and even Twitter. There is no doubt that the AMP is going to be huge. The initial partners that the project started with were Vox, BuzzFeed and Washington Post.

So what do you think? Is AMP going to hit the internet market like a truck? Or is it just an “add-on” that will benefit some people while others ignore it?

Photo Credits androidauthority.net