Facebook Instant Articles gets beta launch in Thailand

"Expanding Instant Articles in Thailand is a significant milestone for the product and for each of our early launch partners," Andy Mitchell, director of global media partnerships, said yesterday.

Currently, the average news story takes an average of eight seconds to load – by far the slowest single content type on Facebook.

Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as 10 times faster.

Thai publications including Kom Chad Luek are now live.

Other partners that have signed on to the programme and will begin publishing soon are Daily News, Kapook.com, Khao Sod, Nation TV, Prachachat, Matichon, MGR Online and Thai Rath.

"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," Mitchell said.

Every Instant Article has a lightning bolt, promising a fast, interactive experience.

Instant Articles is also introducing a suite of interactive features that allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways, such as zooming in and exploring high-resolution photos by tilting the phone.

Auto-play videos come alive by scrolling through stories. There are interactive maps, audio captions and even in-line "like" and "comment" options on individual parts of an article.

"We worked closely with our early media partners in Thailand to begin rolling out Instant Articles locally," said Ken Cheung, Facebook head of media partnerships in Asia-Pacific.

"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."

The Instant Articles experience is seamless for readers, Facebook says. They are the articles already in Facebook News Feed, made faster and more beautiful. 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 uses the languages of the Web and systems that publishers already work on – RSS and HTML. Facebook says it has documented an open standard that is easy for publishers to adopt.

Globally, Instant Articles is available to all iPhone users. Android will launch later this year, with a small public beta available now. After the beta launch, Instant Articles will be open to a wider group of publishers in the months to come.