GMA News, Facebook launch Instant Articles in PHL

GMA News, one of the Philippines' leading news outlets, has just partnered with Facebook on Instant Articles, the social media giant's latest effort to deliver the news fresh and fast to its users.

Beginning December 3, GMA News joins a select few news outlets around the world utilizing the new platform, including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, and MTV.

The move builds on GMA News' already formidable presence on Filipinos' social network of choice: with some 6 million followers, the GMA News Facebook Page is one of the most read and most respected news portals in the country. 

"Instant Articles is the perfect opportunity for GMA News to engage more people with fresh content—we are going where they are, reaching them where they feel comfortable, and catching them where they spend much if not most of their online time," said GMA News Online publisher Sheila Paras.

"We worked closely with our early media partners in to begin rolling out Instant Articles locally. Internationally, publishers are already sharing thousands of Instant Articles on Facebook each day, and looking ahead we're excited to partner with more publishers here to bring the Instant Articles experience to more people," said Ken Cheung, Head of Media Partnerships, APAC, Facebook.

Facebook pushed the beta launch of Instant Articles in the Philippines with the hopes of cutting down the time users need to access news content on the web via their mobile phones.

"Expanding Instant Articles in the Philippines is a significant milestone for the product and for each of our early launch partners," said Andy Mitchell, Director of Global Media Partnerships, Facebook.

"Instant Articles has been designed with extensive feedback from publishers, and we’re excited to bring this collaboration to our publishing partners in Asia to help them distribute fast, interactive articles to their readers in the Facebook app."

Instant Articles displayed on Facebook News Feeds will sport a distinctive "lightning bolt" icon, with the potential for richer content than the usual Facebook post. Publishers can allow users to zoom in on high-resolution photos by tilting their phones, explore interactive maps, watch videos on demand, and listen to audio captions. Users may also comment on parts of an article in-line.

Instant Articles is already available for iPhone users, but will roll out on Android before yearend.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained the need for the Instant Articles initiative in a Townhall Q&A earlier this year, saying that people may want to read news on the web, but loading the article separately might take too long. 

"[I]f you tap on a news link, since that content isn't stored on Facebook and you have to download it from elsewhere, it can take 10+ seconds to load. People don't want to wait that long, so a lot of people abandon news before it has loaded or just don't even bother tapping on things in the first place, even if they wanted to read them," he elaborated. — Bea Montenegro/TJD, GMA News