After the social media giant rolled out Instant Articles late last week, Facebook Messenger users will now be able to access quick-loading content from links published within the popular app. Facebook said that it had seen strong indication that the optimised article-reading format provides a better experience for everyone on the platform.

This means that users can enjoy accessing content up to ten times more quickly when they tap on an Instant Article link on Facebook Messenger. Readers will be able to easily recognise these articles, which are optimised for mobile and converted to HTML5, as they will each have a lightning bolt icon on the top right-hand corner.

In a statement introducing Instant Articles for Messenger, Product Manager Josh Roberts said that the format delivers a better experience and that it would be hugely helpful for the more than 900 million people who use the Facebook Messenger service every month to share entertaining and informative content from across the web.

Optimised for mobile

Roberts admitted that the current link-sharing procedure, which requires links to load in a mobile browser, is inadequate, as users often experience slow performance, especially those with a poor Internet connection. The arrival of Instant Articles means that Messenger now shares the same reading experience for optimised content as the official Facebook mobile app.

Publishers who have opted in and enabled Instant Articles will now see their content rendered in the optimised reading mode when the URL is shared in Facebook Messenger. According to Facebook, the articles will first start appearing in Android before arriving on iOS in the coming weeks.

Facebook officially launched the Instant Articles feature back in May 2015 with publishers including The Guardian, BBC News, The New York Times and BuzzFeed as partners. It then rolled out the service to all developers earlier this year. Facebook claims that Instant Articles drive 20 per cent more clicks and 30 per cent more shares, while readers are 70 per cent less likely to abandon content once they have clicked through.

“Facebook’s goal is to connect people to the stories, posts, videos or photos that matter most to them,” the company stated. “Opening up Instant Articles will allow any publisher to tell great stories, that load quickly, to people all over the world.”