Facebook has long desired to be the only site on the internet users need to visit and an update announced on Tuesday brings that goal one step closer.
The firm has tweaked its Instant Articles tool, which allows news sources to publish articles and stories in full, via the social network.
Now Facebook is enabling those providers to simply add some HTML5 code within their own content management systems (CMS) to automatically publish to Facebook at the same time as their own site.
As well as making it easier for single tool uploads, Facebook has also secured access to The Washington Post’s complete daily output of around 1,200 stories.
The highly-regarded newspaper joins over a dozen additional partners who have joined the Instant Articles program.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Facebook wrote: “We heard clearly from publishers that they want a single tool to publish articles to the web, mobile apps, or any other places readers see their content. That’s why Instant Articles supports publishing directly from a publisher’s Content Management System — there’s no need to author articles in a new location.”
“When publishers get started with Instant Articles, they provide an RSS feed of their articles to Facebook, a format that most Content Management Systems already support. Once this RSS feed is set up, Instant Articles automatically loads new stories as soon as they are published to the publisher’s website and apps.
See also: Is Facebook testing its own search engine?
The Instant Articles tool sees content load ten times faster than clicking the link to a web article, allowing articles to be read in the News Feed.
The update comes as Apple’s big push to aggregate content through iOS 9’s News app reaches users.
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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.