Inspired by Facebook's Instant Articles, LinkedIn is in talks with publishers to provide a similar draw to its own social network, sources told BuzzFeed News.
Last month, Facebook opened up its Instant Article platform to all publishers. The format enables publishers to lean on Facebook's servers instead of their own, which allows for stories to be hosted on the social networking site and saves readers from having to go off site when they click on third-party content.
Hosting third-party articles on Facebook enables mobile devices to load the content up to ten times faster than opening standard stories, according to Facebook's figures. People read 20 percent more Instant Articles and are 70 percent less likely to abandon the content.
With LinkedIn looking to sharpen its hooks with hopes of keeping is users engaged with the social network beyond just sending and replying to connection requests, the company has been taking a look at Facebook's success with Instant Articles and has been in talks with publishers about the format over the last few weeks, according to BuzzFeed News.
A LinkedIn spokesperson gave BuzzFeed News a statement that apparently confirms the company's probe of an instant article format but offered nothing solid.
"Publishers remain a very important part of our content ecosystem and we are in regular conversations with them about new ways to work together," said the spokesperson. "Our goal is to ensure we get the right content in front of the right member at the right time to deliver the best member experience possible."
LinkedIn is already working with Google's AMP Project (Accelerated Mobile Pages), an initiative that entails publishers optimizing their content so that it loads quickly no matter where its available. While the AMP Project offers an open source solution to speeding up the delivery of content to people who could click away at any second, LinkedIn is still looking at alternatives.
Along with keeping users on its social network longer, LinkedIn, like most of the rest of the web, is trying to capitalize on the money mobile offers. And on mobile devices, it's even more important that content loads quickly and displays correctly.
