Beiruting News

Facebook on Wednesday introduced a new product named "Instant Articles" that will deliver quick and rich news content to readers from a variety of popular news outlets. Facebook's goal with the product was to push news content as fast as possible; the social network said that, typically, news articles take about 8 seconds to load in its mobile app. That, it seems, is far too slow for the modern news cycle.

Instant Articles should load up to 10 times faster than Web articles, Facebook said, and the content is going to offer much richer content than a standard article. "Zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting your phone," the company said. "Watch auto-play videos come alive as you scroll through stories. Explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and even like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line." Content will be curated by individual publishers, which can also sell ads inside the articles.

Initial partners include The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, ABC News, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel Online and Bild. Instant Articles makes its debut Wednesday on the iPhone with content from several of those aforementioned publishers.