If you are an avid user of this social networking platform, you definitely have a Facebook app on your Android phone. If no, the app is free to download and install right from the Google Play Store. Once you get started, simply check out for a lightning bolt icon when checking articles and tap on it to experience the changes.
This new update was announced on Wednesday following a few weeks of testing on the same Android platform; however, the test process only took into account a few users. Nonetheless, as from now, you can get the quick-loading Instant Articles on your phone so that you can stay up to date with the latest around the world.
Facebook Instant Articles are basically news pieces that are published to the platform directly, promising to load up to 10 times faster when compared to using external links to read the same news pieces. The leading social networking company has partnered with more than 350 publishers from all over the world who will be responsible for posting their content on Facebook's mobile apps via this new feature.
After initially running tests on the iOS devices starting from May this year, Mark Zuckerberg and co have finally decided to bring it to Android. However, those who got it in its initial day had very little to enjoy from as the company had very few partners. Now that it has a huge collection and more are expected to come in as the popularity of the feature grows, we expect to see it move to Windows Phone and maybe Symbian OS at a later time.
The more than 350 publishers on Facebook's Instant Articles will be posting daily, but this is not a requirement for the company. At the moment, a huge number of these publishers are based in the U.S.; however, more publishers from different parts of the world are expected to come in with time, especially from the developing market. The company has been focusing most of its recent efforts on spreading its services to these regions, something it recently insisted by introducing 2G Tuesdays where its employees get to use this kind of slow connection in order to get the feeling of what users in these regions go through when accessing Facebook.
At the moment, Facebook is happy to reveal that it connects more than 1 billion per day. However, with Instant Articles, this figure might just get bigger.
If you haven't noticed the new Instant Articles on your Facebook app for Android, make sure you head to the Google Play and install the latest version.
