Facebook Instant Articles not as easy as it looks

Facebook announced the release of a new plugin for WordPress users that will help them promote and publish instant articles on their feed. It is said that the new app will be release on 12 April at Facebook’s “F8 Conference” in San Francisco.

The idea behind it, is that users will be able to load and read faster articles straight in their facebook feed. This means that the loading time will be faster and you’ll also have access to a detailed insight about your audience.

In theory everything sounds brilliant but there are a few drawbacks that you need to be aware of.

• The app is said to work with most of your wordpress plugins, but some of them will need a bit of coding to ensure that everything will be looking ok;
• The overall look of the article will be mainly managed by Facebook and will allow you to use your logo, select your brand colors and chose a desired font, but there will be no option to supply your Css.
• You will be able to use most of your interactive elements but some of them will require more work from your side. You’ll be able to embed video and images as well as filter, but for things such as maps, audio or captioning you will need to start writing some extra code;
• On your wordpress blog you can publish about everything and anything, but the Instant Article app will be “controlled” be Facebook and they will have to review the post and accept it as appropriate;

Facebook also released information about their rules regarding Instant Articles, and luckily they provide some HTML codes for those that will need to do so in order for their article to look up to its standards.

By the looks of it, this Instant Article app will not be as instant as it looks like. Curious to see how many wordpress users will chose this way to share their content on the social media.