The quick-loading article format, which was introduced in 2015 and will be discontinued in April 2023, claims Axios.
Received 55,497 requests for user data from Indian government: Meta (File Photo)
As the company shifts away from its news-related products and focuses on TikTok-like goods, Meta will discontinue support for its “Instant Articles” format on the Facebook platform in the coming year.
The quick-loading article format, which was introduced in 2015 and will be discontinued in April 2023, claims Axios.
Instant Stories was a mobile format that allowed the Facebook app to load news articles quickly.
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When support is discontinued, Facebook news links will direct users to a publisher’s mobile website.
“Currently less than 3 per cent of what people around the world see in Facebook’s Feed are posts with links to news articles,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
“And as we said earlier this year, as a business it doesn’t make sense to over invest in areas that don’t align with user preferences,” it added.
News publishers now have six months from the firm to revise their Facebook strategies.
The business, which formerly referred to itself as the Fifth Estate, redesigned the News page and added a section specifically for local news along with other features like breaking news notifications.
Meta said earlier this month that it would discontinue its newsletter service for authors and producers called Bulletin by the beginning of 2023.
In order to compete with Chinese short-form video TikTok, Meta stated it will redirect resources from Bulletin to work on its discovery system.
The business introduced Bulletin, a collection of publishing and subscription tools, in June 2021 to assist US creators.
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