Last month, Google desktop search results started showing tweets after four years. Now, Google and Twitter are teaming up to offer instant articles to compete with Facebook’s similar project.
What is the difference between Facebook’s project and Google/Twitter project?
Google and Twitter are teaming up to offer instant articles and will be developing the project open-source so that other tech companies can adopt their platform. The main difference between both the projects is that Twitter and the search giant wouldn’t host the content themselves.
If a user will click on a link, it would open up a cached “snapshot” of the webpage. It would be functionally similar to Facebook Instant Articles, but publishers will host their own content.
The difference may not mean much to users, but it is significant to publishers as well as the tech companies that display their stuff. According to a person familiar with the matter, the cached Web pages will show the original ads the publisher sold next to the story.
Google and Twitter are teaming up to offer instant articles and Danny Sullivan, Editor of Search Engine Land said regarding it:
“Google and Twitter are rightly fearful that publishers are going to start doing something specific for Facebook and they will become an afterthought.”
The business terms haven’t been discussed among Google, Twitter and the publishers, said people familiar with the matter. Apple and Facebook let content publishers keep 100 percent of the revenue for ads they sell on their hosted articles, and also give them the majority of the ad revenue for the ads sold on tech platforms.
Google and Twitter are teaming up to offer instant articles and unlike Facebook’s similar project and Apple’s forthcoming News app, it won’t present their answer as a branded product. The tech companies are internally describing their plan as “accelerated mobile pages.” The name may change before launch, which is expected before the year end.