Facebook's Instant Articles have finally rolled out to Android devices, meaning that anyone with an Android device can now read the quick-to-load articles hosted on Facebook's servers.
Rolling the service out to Android promises to bring Instant Articles to a much wider audience, and arguably brings it to the people who need it most — those with a slow Internet connection.
As mentioned, Instant Articles are hosted on Facebook's servers, meaning that when a user clicks on an article within the Facebook app, they can load much more quickly and without having to redirect the user to a different website.
Facebook itself will obviously also stand to benefit from the new feature. Instead of users heading to different websites to read articles, they will now be kept within the Facebook app, allowing Facebook to continue to advertise to these users. As far as publishers are concerned, while over 350 signed up for the new feature after realizing they would probably lose views by forcing them to go to slower-loading websites, they will be making less money considering the fact that ad revenue will be lower. Facebook will be offering publishers a chunk of the revenue that is made from pages within the articles, however, that will be less than what would be made on the publishers' websites.
Of course, the feature is also relatively new, and Facebook is continuing to tweak it so that publishers are happy with how it works. In the short term, however, Facebook might need to rely on sheer numbers to keep interest up, so rolling the feature out to Android is a move that makes sense.
Via: Engadget
