Facebook Instant Articles now compatible with Google AMP; Apple News to be available soon

In a measure aimed at unifying news publishing platforms, Social media giant Facebook on Thursday declared that it is adding support for Google AMP and Apple News to its Instant Articles platform.

Publishers can now create a single Instant Article that can also be published as Google AMP and Apple News articles.

Facebook said the step will let publishers cut charges on building different versions for three different platforms. While the Instant Articles SDK extension is accessible for Google AMP at present, it will be created for Apple News in the “coming weeks.”

Ever since its Instant Articles were begun in 2015, Facebook has been contending with Google AMP and Apple News - rival Web and app publishing standards.

Facebook’s recently introduced extension to the open source software development kit (SDK) will permit publishers to produce Instant Articles to generate the code, needed to build other formats for Google AMP and Apple News, in the meantime doing away with the resource-heavy step for doing the latter.

“The SDK already enables developers to easily integrate publishing Instant Articles into their content management systems. By supporting a gateway to generate content across platforms, we’re also making it easy for publishers to apply some of the custom styling templates in AMP and Apple News that they have created in the Instant Articles Style Editor,” notes Piyush Mangalick, Partner Engineering Director at Facebook in a company’s blog post.

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The collective Instant Articles code will also include custom formats, similar fonts, colours, and captions that the mark-up publishers have designed in Facebook’s Style Editor to be reflected on other new platforms as well.

Facebook has been endeavoring to add new users for its video platform, with the target of competing with the rivals like YouTube.

Now, Facebook says that it is contemplating news distribution through its platform seriously as the new SDK has emerged as a breakthrough after “meaningful conversations with publishers as part of the Facebook Journalism Project to better serve the needs of news publishers and readers on Facebook.”

Key publishers like The New York Times and The Guardian recently elected out of Facebook’s Instant Articles as its business model stopped being interesting and attractive to them.

As we said, the SDK extension is now obtainable for Google AMP articles while the compatibility support for Apple News “will be ready in the coming weeks.”