While other publications are gingerly testing the waters of social media distribution, The Washington Post is doing a cannonball into the pool through its partnership with Facebook’s Instant Articles: this week WaPo announced that it is sending all of its stories to Facebook for formatting as Instant Articles, in essence making the publication’s entire output available for perusal via Facebook’s iOS app.
If you stopped reading The Washington Post when the newspaper declared war on your AdBlock earlier this month, Bezos and Zuckerberg might have just found a way to draw you back into the fold: Today, the Post announced that it will begin publishing 100% of its stories as Facebook Instant Articles. That amounts to roughly 1,200 articles a day including wire stories.
WaPo content available on Instant Articles includes videos and photo galleries as well as text, all formatted to appear native to Facebook. The platform also added new feature to help publishers publish their full catalog of articles on Instant Articles everyday. Writing for Re/code, Peter Kafka noted that the other outlets have been more conservative, posting “hundreds” of articles to Facebook daily. Using HTML5, publishers will be able to use their own social media embeds, ads and analytics in Instant Articles.
A range of major publishers signed on at launch including the New York Times, the Atlantic and BuzzFeed, and on Tuesday several others joined, such as MoviePilot, Mashable, Huffington Post, Daily Mail and Vox Media. He explained that by partnering with Facebook, the Post will have more chances of reaching out to its new audience. NBC News also has been posting around 30 or 40 posts a day. Over the coming months we will be expanding the number of people in the Facebook app on iPhone who can see Instant Articles.