Facebook is adding a dozen new publishers to its Instant Articles platform soon, although the company has refrained from naming these partners. The platform also added new feature to help publishers publish their full catalog of articles on Instant Articles everyday. According to Facebook, publishers need to provide an RSS feed of their articles to be published to Facebook, post which new stories are loaded to Instant Articles automatically as soon as they are published on the publisher's website and/or app. Updates and corrections are also automatically updated via RSS, although it's not clear how long it will take for articles to reflect changes. Facebook will also link each Instant Article to the URL of its web version, so when users share articles (directly from the source), the algorithm cross-checks the URL for its Instant Article equivalent, and delivers the Instant Article instead. Using HTML5, publishers will be able to use their own social media embeds, ads and analytics in Instant Articles. As of now, Facebook mentions that it only displays Instant Articles only to a small number of people, although it claims it will extend this feature to other users over the next few months. Note that, Facebook announced Instant Articles in May this year, with news from The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News and German news publishers Spiegel and Bild. It’s worth noting that Facebook has already reduced the reach of news updates significantly with the intent of trying to get…
