Facebook is on course to provide readers a process to subscribe and pay for news directly from its app. While doing that, the company is also tinkering with how to present the publisher’s content. As per the latest development, Facebook removed Instant Articles from Messenger.
Quoting a spokesperson, “we’re focusing our investment in Instant Articles in the Facebook core app and are no longer offering Instant Articles in Messenger,” a spokesperson said. “We believe that Messenger is an exciting channel for new and interesting news consumption experiences, including the opportunity to build unique messaging experiences in Messenger.”
Instant Articles is well-known since its introduction in 2015 as a Facebook service that does as the name suggests. But there have been glitches in its format. Facebook tried its best to respond to the issues to make it more publisher-friendly. But there were still some attribution issues.
After the launch of Instant Articles, it was expected that it could change the scenario in favor of publishers. Facebook was prioritizing friends over publishers in its News Feed Algorithm. One would easily wonder if and how Instant Articles was able to change that!
Instant Articles still remain an anchor in terms of Facebook’s way of working with publishers.
As for the latest development, Facebook confirmed that they are in association with publishers to develop a paid-content model. The testing will begin later this year. A report by WSJ contains details on how it will work. The report adds that publishers need to publish content natively to Facebook through Instant Articles only.
Facebook earns way more revenue in ads than publishers ever will from publishing their content in Instant Articles. Therefore, the idea of making a paid-content model can be offsetting, with Instant Articles not really helping Facebook to generate revenue much.
