Facebook reacts to Thai readership boom with Instant Articles

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Facebook reacts to Thai readership boom with Instant Articles
By: The Nation



BANGKOK -- Facebook Instant Articles has been rolled out in Thailand after an early launch. Its partners include more than 50 media outlets across the region.

Andy Mitchell, director of Global Media Partnerships, said Facebook launched Instant Articles in Thailand because more people here get their news on mobile devices and Facebook wants to make the experience faster and richer.

Currently, the average news story takes about eight seconds to load - by far the slowest single content type on Facebook. Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles.

Thailand publishers now include Kom Chad Luek.

Also signed on to the programme to begin publishing soon are: Dailynews, Kapook.com, Khao Sod, Nation TV, Prachachat, Matichon, MGR Online, Thai Rath.

"Expanding Instant Articles in Thailand is a significant milestone for the product and for each of our early launch partners. Instant Articles has been designed with extensive feedback from publishers, and we're bringing this collaboration to our publishing partners in Asia to help them distribute fast, interactive articles to their readers in the Facebook app," Mitchell said.

Every Instant Article has a lightning bolt, so when a user sees that lightning bolt in the News Feed, they know it is going to be a fast and interactive.

Also, Instant Articles introduces a suite of interactive features that allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways: Zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting the phone. Watch auto-play videos come alive by scrolling through stories. Explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and even "like" and "comment" on individual parts of an article in-line.

"We designed Instant Articles to give publishers control over their stories, brand experience and monetisation opportunities. Publishers in Asia are able to sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook's Audience Network to monetise unsold inventory. Publishers will also have the ability to track data and traffic through their current analytic tools," road.

"We worked closely with our early media partners in Thailand to begin rolling out Instant Articles locally. Internationally, publishers are already sharing thousands of Instant Articles on Facebook each day, and looking ahead we'll partner with more publishers here to bring the Instant Articles experience to more people," said Ken Cheung, Head of Media Partnerships, APAC, Facebook.

The Instant Articles experience is seamless for readers - they are simply articles already in the Facebook News Feed, made faster and more beautiful. When a friend or publisher shares a link on Facebook, the experience is displayed automatically if an Instant Article version is available.

Instant Articles uses the language of the web and systems publishers already work on - RSS and HTML.

Globally, Instant Articles is now available to all iPhone users. Android will launch later this year, with a small public beta available now. Following the beta launch, Instant Articles will be open to a wider group of publishers in the months to come.

Full Story: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/technology/Facebook-reacts-to-Thai-readership-boom-with-Insta-30274515.html

-- The Nation 2015-12-08