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Facebook Starts Hosting “Instant Articles”

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Re: Facebook Starts Hosting “Instant Articles”

#51

Post by adrenalinup »

dcosson wrote: post #25
phreeza wrote: post #2

Sadly, this looks like one more step in the walled garden web direction, somewhat like AOL sites back in the day. I am amazed publishers are apparently going along with this. They must be very desperate for views if they are willing to relinquish this much control.

I for one am hoping that this catches on, walled garden or not I'd rather spend my time reading content on an interface that I don't have to fight against (e.g. full screen overlay ads with a tiny x to close) and I trust facebook to build that better than anyone else. I'm also surprised publishers are going along with it though, it seems a little ironic. The only reason this product is interesting is because so many…

By the way, there is an extension that removes overlays on any website and doesn't require any permissions, Behind The Overlay => https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behindtheoverlay/l...

It's activated by clicking the icon or by using a keyboard shortcut (cmd+shit+x). So there is at least one single way to close any overlay on any website.

Re: Facebook Starts Hosting “Instant Articles”

#52

Post by beagle3 »

dcosson wrote: post #25
phreeza wrote: post #2

Sadly, this looks like one more step in the walled garden web direction, somewhat like AOL sites back in the day. I am amazed publishers are apparently going along with this. They must be very desperate for views if they are willing to relinquish this much control.

I for one am hoping that this catches on, walled garden or not I'd rather spend my time reading content on an interface that I don't have to fight against (e.g. full screen overlay ads with a tiny x to close) and I trust facebook to build that better than anyone else. I'm also surprised publishers are going along with it though, it seems a little ironic. The only reason this product is interesting is because so many…

AdBlockPlus / uBlock Origin user here - I haven't seen an overlay ad (or for that matter, a non-overlay ad) in years now.

And, no, I don't feel guilty - I might have felt guilty if I only paid for ads with my attention (I'm not sure though - I don't feel guilty ignoring the ads on a print newspaper). But allowing ads through means you give 20 or so organizations with questionable ethics complete info about your web use, including (but not limited) to when and what -- and those 20 organizations sell that info to the highest bidder. No, I don't feel guilty at all.

Re: Facebook Starts Hosting “Instant Articles”

#53

Post by ascagnel_ »

emodendroket wrote: post #46
wf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? In my experience this has always been true on mobile. If something takes longer than a few seconds to load it gets closed or restarted.

How many news articles take longer than a few seconds to load?

Through Facebook's in-app browser? Most. And you must at least start the load in the in-app browser to get the option to open it in the device's native browser.

Re: Facebook Starts Hosting “Instant Articles”

#54

Post by adrenalinup »

beagle3 wrote: post #52
dcosson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one am hoping that this catches on, walled garden or not I'd rather spend my time reading content on an interface that I don't have to fight against (e.g. full screen overlay ads with a tiny x to close) and I trust facebook to build that better than anyone else. I'm also surprised publishers are going along with it though, it seems a little ironic. The only reason this product is interesting is because so many…

AdBlockPlus / uBlock Origin user here - I haven't seen an overlay ad (or for that matter, a non-overlay ad) in years now. And, no, I don't feel guilty - I might have felt guilty if I only paid for ads with my attention (I'm not sure though - I don't feel guilty ignoring the ads on a print newspaper). But allowing ads through means you give 20 or so organizations with questionable ethics complete info about your web u…

Overlays often have ask users to like some page on facebook, or to subscribe to some mailing list, it's not advertising. But you need to make a click to close it.

Re: Facebook Starts Hosting “Instant Articles”

#55

Post by frandroid »

phreeza wrote: post #2

Sadly, this looks like one more step in the walled garden web direction, somewhat like AOL sites back in the day. I am amazed publishers are apparently going along with this. They must be very desperate for views if they are willing to relinquish this much control.

I think they're more desperate for advertising revenue than "views".

Re: Facebook Starts Hosting “Instant Articles”

#56

Post by beagle3 »

adrenalinup wrote: post #54
beagle3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AdBlockPlus / uBlock Origin user here - I haven't seen an overlay ad (or for that matter, a non-overlay ad) in years now. And, no, I don't feel guilty - I might have felt guilty if I only paid for ads with my attention (I'm not sure though - I don't feel guilty ignoring the ads on a print newspaper). But allowing ads through means you give 20 or so organizations with questionable ethics complete info about your web u…

Overlays often have ask users to like some page on facebook, or to subscribe to some mailing list, it's not advertising. But you need to make a click to close it.

uBlock and AdBlockPlus make them go away, at least on website I frequent.

And facebook is one of those questionable ethics organizations I mentioned. The mere existence of a "Like" button (whether you click it or not) in 99.99% of the cases already gives facebook all the info about your surfing habits.

Re: Facebook Starts Hosting “Instant Articles”

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

thanatropism wrote: post #39
smil wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read about this earlier today on /r/contentstrategist and they were saying that videos posted directly to Facebook get far, far more "plays" than if they are posted as links to YouTube. This is thanks to Facebook's AutoPlay for native videos, and whether people actually watch the videos more... Is not really interesting because plays/impressions is the metric by which a boss measures the marketing teams work, or ho…

You can't fool bosses for very long.

You can fool bosses for as long as they don't figure out a better metric, and bosses can hang on to invalid metrics for a fairly long time.
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