MANILA, Philippines – Facebook introduced Tuesday, May 12 (May 13 Manila time), a new feature meant for publishers to quickly create stories on the social network.

Called Instant Articles, the new feature aims to remedy one of the issues of sharing culture in the mobile age: slow-loading articles.

According to the announcement, the average story shared on Facebook takes around 8 seconds to load on mobile. Comparatively, Facebook says, “Instant Articles makes the reading experience as much as 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles.”

Instant Articles also includes interactive features, such as zoomable photos, auto-playing videos that activate when you scroll to them, audio captions, and interactive maps. Users viewing an Instant Article can also comment or like individual parts of the article within the body of the text.

As for monetization, Facebook says, “Publishers can sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook’s Audience Network to monetize unsold inventory.”

Publishers can also track data and traffic for Instant Articles through comScore and other analytics tools.

Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox called Instant Articles a new “tool that enables publishers to provide a better experience for their readers on Facebook. Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models.”

Facebook has teamed up with 9 publishers for the initial launch: The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.

Instant Articles will launch on Facebook for iPhone with a number of stories published by The New York Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic, NBC and The Atlantic. – Rappler.com