Last week, Facebook launched Instant Articles, putting entire news stories from nine news organizations inside Facebook’s mobile app where people can read them rather than going to a website. Facebook says one of the main reasons for this arrangement is speed: articles delivered through Facebook’s mobile app supposedly load as much as ten times faster than the same article from a website. But some writers who offer commentary on the implications of technology changes think they see something other than just more speed going on here.
- Is Facebook a partner or a competitor for media companies? Yes. (Fortune | Matthew Ingram) “What Facebook wants is to deepen and strengthen its hold on users. In that sense, news content is just a means to an end. And the risk is that if it stops being an effective means to that end, then Facebook will lose interest in promoting it. But in the meantime, Facebook will have solidified its status as the default place where millions or possibly even billions of people go to get their news.”
- First Click: The inevitability of Facebook instant articles (The Verge | Thomas Ricker) “For the Facebook user, the benefit is clear: get the stories they’re already clicking on faster. For publishers though, it’s fraught with risk as they relinquish the distribution platform in order to meet readers where they are. It’s a return to Aol’s walled garden only with Zuck as its topiarist.”
- The walled gardens of the Web are growing (ReadWrite | David Nield) “With 1.4 billion users and growing, Facebook has a much better chance [than AOL] of becoming the Web for the majority of people who use it. That may do wonders for page loading times and tilt-to-pan photos, but it means we’re all playing by Mark Zuckerberg’s rules, both publishers and readers alike. That’s not a privilege that Facebook, Google or anyone else should have.”
- 6 reasons the media insiders panicking about Facebook Instant Articles are wrong (Vox | Timothy B. Lee) “The big worry of Instant Article skeptics is that users will get used to the fast loading of Instant Articles, and that this will have two negative effects. First, as the experience of reading news on Facebook improves, more people will do it, further expanding Facebook’s market share and — therefore — its power. And second, users will become more reluctant to click on links to outside articles and wait several seconds for the article to load. This argument doesn’t take the welfare of Facebook users seriously. The several-second delay between the time a user clicks on a link and the time she’s able to read an article is a real problem.”
Articles from Ohio Web Library:
- Ex-AOL exec calls Facebook new ‘walled garden’ (AP Top News Package, 5/01/2012 | Ryan Nakashima)
- Media: The web idealists have a point: content can’t truly blossom in walled gardens. (Campaign (UK), 6/13/2014, p38 | Russell Davies)
- Facebook courts news giants into a deal to share viewers, and profits. (All Things Considered (NPR), 5/13/2015 | Aarti Shahani)
