Checking out articles your friends share through Facebook Messenger is about to become much faster. Facebook has announced today that it is bringing its Instant Articles to Facebook Messenger, meaning links from participating publishers should open much faster going forward.
From Facebook:
When you tap on an Instant Article link in Facebook, it loads up to ten times faster than a standard mobile web article, so it was important to make sure everyone on Messenger could have the same great reading experience. As we roll this out over the next several weeks, people using Messenger will see a lightning bolt on the top right corner of some links shared in Messenger, which indicates the link is an Instant Article.
It’s definitely good to see Instant Articles, which work much like Google’s own Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in Search, make their way from Facebook proper to Messenger. Of course, you’ll only be able to take advantage of the vastly reduced loading times and data consumption if the publisher is part of the Instant Articles program, but it’s a step forward nonetheless.
Facebook notes that Instant Articles will become available for Android first, while iPhone users will get the feature in the coming weeks.
