Facebook will host content directly within its app avoiding delays associated with visiting external news websites.

After months of speculation and negotiations between publishers, today Facebook launched its “Instant Articles”. The program directly hosts publisher’s content within the app itself which was created in a bid to reduce the load time to external websites.

iPhone users will be the first to use the new system, with the roll out to Android devices coming soon. Facebook has said from today iOS app users will see glossy cover photos and videos tagged with map coordinates. Facebook is aiming to showcase rich-media news stories which offer narration, video and images from The New York Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic, and six other outlets to begin with.

Facebook has been very keen to get large publishers on board and has given them a lucrative proposition. The publishers can either sell and embed advertisements in the articles themselves and Facebook will allow them to keep all of the revenue despite traffic generation coming from Facebook. The other alternative is that Facebook will manage the advertising and give 70% of revenue to publishers. In addition to this they will allow the publishers to collect data about visitors like they would on their own sites.

For publishers, the opportunity Facebook presents appears quite positive; free traffic from one of the largest and most well known websites on the internet and an agreement which allows them to keep all advertising revenue that is generated. The concern some publishers face is that Facebook itself could gain more influence and power eventually taking visitors away from their own websites in the long run.

Vivian Schiller, a former executive at NBC, The New York Times and Twitter says publishers have little choice but to cooperate with Facebook. “That’s where the audience is,” Ms. Schiller said. “It’s too massive to ignore.” Some publishers have been left in a position where they could face losing part of their market share which is generated through the social networking site giving them no option but to agree.

If Instant Articles are successfully received by Facebook’s audience the company is planning to add more publishers in the next month with a view to rolling out the platform to any publisher that already shares news on Facebook.