Facebook Instant Karma
Remember when Facebook refused to go fully native on mobile? Remember all the web-wrapper nonsense and insanely slow performance? You should, it wasn’t that long ago. My, how the world has changed.
With Instant Articles, Facebook has not only done a 180 from what Mark Zuckerberg has called the company’s biggest mistake, they’ve now done another lap just to prove a point. Not only is the web not fast enough for apps, it’s not fast enough for text either.
And you know what, they’re right.
Such a stance will be considered blasphemy in some circles. But it doesn’t change the very real and very obvious truth: on mobile, the web browser just isn’t cutting it.
Yes, native apps have spoiled us. But such spoilage is natural. In the end, all that matters is user experience. Native apps provide a better user experience on mobile than a web browser. That was true five years ago, that’s true today. And I suspect it will still be true five years from now.
So rather than wait around for the web browsers to catch up, Facebook is taking action. And, by the way, they’re hardly the first to do this. Isn’t Facebook Instant essentially the same thing Flipboard and others have been doing for years? Yes, yes it is.
And again, it’s the right thing to do from a user experience perspective. Who wants to wait longer to load what they’re looking for, be it a game or an article? No one. While they’ll never admit it, even those with fears that this will lead to an end of the “open web” don’t want to wait.
Speaking of that “end,” it’s important to note that Facebook is, of course, still powered by that very same web. What it’s no longer powered by is a web browser. That’s very different.
Though, in a way, Facebook itself really is just a web browser. It’s just a different, newfangled one for a new era. A mobile era.
So what’s the downside? A few weeks ago, upon hearing the rumors of this Facebook news, I tweeted something that got quite a bit of play:
While both Facebook and the publishers are saying all the right things in these early days of Instant, it’s hard to see how this ends well for everyone. Publications already increasingly reliant on Facebook are only going to become more so if this works. And it should work because, again, who doesn’t want faster?
If I was running a publication, I would have a hard time rationalizing this move — even if your model is fully compatible with something like this (BuzzFeed). It means you’re not in control of your destiny, Facebook is. And one day, even in the best case scenario, that’s going to be a pain point.
You’re essentially outsourcing the presentation and distribution of your content. It may even work. But you’re signing up to be someone else’s “bitch.” That usually doesn’t end well.
Best case scenario may be that this ends up like the AOL Keyword areas of old. Publications survived after the walls of AOL eventually fell. They will here too. But I’m not sure all of them will. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing!
Back to the user experience topic. I’ve complained before that one thing I think Android gets wrong is dumping you into the Chrome browser app for every link you click on in an app. (This is the case in some iOS apps as well, but many, like Twitter and Facebook, utilize a web view pop-up in-app.) Such a stance always causes grief amongst those who again, believe in the power of the “open” web. So I can’t wait to see the reaction to this!
My reaction: good. At the very least, Facebook has put everyone else on notice. Your content better load fast or you’re screwed. Publication websites have become an absolutely bloated mess. They range from beautiful (The Verge) to atrocious (Bloomberg) to unusable (Forbes). The common denominator: they’re all way too slow. Instant karma’s gonna get them.
