Facebook’s Instant Articles feature, which allows content owners to publish entire articles to the social network, is now available to all iPhone users.
The tool, which has been tested on a limited number of users in the past few months, can now be experienced by everyone with an Apple smartphone.
The Instant Articles are represented by a lightning bolt that sits in the top right corner of the image related to a story.
Clicking that bolt will expand the article allowing Facebook users to read it in full without travelling to the external site of the source.
Instant Articles will take a number of forms depending on the partner publisher. Facebook says NBC News’ addition will feature auto-playing videos, while
Those checking out Buzzfeed’s Instant Articles will be able to like and comment on individual photos and National Geographic’s will feature geo-tagged images.
“The Instant Articles experience is seamless for readers,” Facebook wrote on its media blog on Tuesday.
“When a friend or publisher shares a link on Facebook, the enhanced experience is displayed automatically if an Instant Article version is available. Instant Articles are simply the articles already in your Facebook News Feed, made faster and more beautiful.”
See all: Facebook testing it’s own search engine?
Facebook’s official launch marks the culmination of a long-held desire to be the only site on the web members have to visit in order to get their news.
It faces off against other aggregation solutions like Apple News, Flipboard and Twitter’s new Moments tool.
Android users will be included later this year, but a public beta is available from today.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
