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Facebook launches 'Instant Articles'

Facebook has partnered with The New York Times, BuzzFeed and seven other news media companies to launch a new feature that will allow those companies to publish articles directly to the Facebook platform, the social media company announced late Tuesday night.

"Instant Articles" will allow news organizations to reach Facebook users directly while still maintaining control over content, layout and ad revenue. The service, which has long been anticipated, will formally launch on Wednesday morning in partnership with the Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.

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

The upshot of the service is that some of these media organizations' content will now live on the Facebook platform. As the late Times media columnist David Carr wrote late last year, this "wholesale transfer of content sends a cold, dark chill down the collective spine of publishers," in part because audience data could now belong to Facebook. "Media companies would essentially be serfs in a kingdom that Facebook owns," he wrote.

The benefit for news organizations is greater reach, and the benefit for readers is a more seamless reading experience. "To date," Facebook wrote in its news release, "stories take 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 ten times faster than standard mobile web articles."