Facebook has launched Instant Articles, enabling media outlets to publish their stories directly to the social network.

Nine big news publishers, including the New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic, have signed on as launch partners. After months of rumors, Facebook began hosting their news articles on its iPhone app on Wednesday.

"As more people get their news on mobile devices, we want to make the experience faster and richer on Facebook," product manager Michael Reckhow said.

It's a bit of an uneasy arrangement, with news outlets handing over some control to the Menlo Park tech giant. In return, the publishers hope to grow their readership and reach by increasing their presence on the world's biggest social network.

"We're participating in Instant Articles to explore ways of growing the number of Times users on Facebook, improving their experience of our journalism and deepening their engagement," said Mark Thompson, chief executive of the New York Times Co.

Facebook maintains that the platform was designed to keep publishers in charge of their content, brand experience and money-making opportunities.

The company said Instant Articles uses the same technology used to display photos and videos quickly in the Facebook app, so articles load instantly, "as much as 10 times faster than the standard mobile web."

Instant Articles also includes a suite of interactive features. Readers can zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting their phones, watch auto-play videos as they scroll through stories, explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and like and comment on individual parts of an article.

The other launch partners are NBC, the Atlantic, the Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.

Also this week, Facebook announced that it was boosting benefits for its contractors and vendors in the U.S.

The benefits include a $15 minimum wage, minimum 15 paid days off for holidays, sick time and vacation, and for workers who don't receive paid parental leave, a $4,000 new child benefit for new parents.

"Taking these steps is the right thing to do for our business and our community," Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a blog post. "Women, because they comprise about two-thirds of minimum wage workers nationally, are particularly affected by wage adjustments. Research also shows that providing adequate benefits contributes to a happier and ultimately more productive workforce."

The social media company on Wednesday said that those interested in using Messenger can now sign up without a Facebook account. All they need to do is tap on a “Not on Facebook” button on the app’s welcome screen and enter a phone number.

Following their premiere this past weekend, “The Brink” and “Ballers” will be on Facebook for a limited time.

The premier episodes of HBO’s new comedy series, Ballers and The Brink, will be available on Facebook for a limited time, Reuters reports. The deal comes as Facebook is drastically ramping up efforts in video, with individual users posting 75% more videos than a year ago.

The two series premiered Sunday; Ballers marks actor and former wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s first foray into television. The Ballers episode will be available on Johnson’s official Facebook page while The Brink will be on the series’ page. HBO has also released premier episodes of shows like Girls and The Newsroom for free on the Google-owned YouTube.



Facebook also scored a win in the video space through a recent deal with Amazon, which released the pilot episode of its original show Catastrophe via the social network instead of its own video streaming service.

Facebook currently has 1.44 billion monthly active users and 936 million daily active users on its network, according to figures it released in its April quarterly earnings report. While Facebook’s video metrics are indeed skyrocketing, it still has only roughly half the video views boasted by YouTube.

Facebook reported earnings and revenue Wednesday that topped analyst estimates.
The company said its adjusted second-quarter earnings came in at 50 cents per share on $4.04 billion in revenue.
Wall Street analysts forecast Facebook would deliver earnings of 47 cents per share on $3.99 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.

I'm excited to announce we’ve completed construction of our first full scale aircraft, Aquila, as part of our Internet.org effort.

Aquila is a solar powered unmanned plane that beams down internet connectivity from the sky. It has the wingspan of a Boeing 737, but weighs less than a car and can stay in the air for months at a time.

We've also made a breakthrough in laser communications technology. We've successfully tested a new laser that can transmit data at 10 gigabits per second. That's ten times faster than any previous system, and it can accurately connect with a point the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away.

This effort is important because 10% of the world’s population lives in areas without existing internet infrastructure. To affordably connect everyone, we need to build completely new technologies.

Using aircraft to connect communities using lasers might seem like science fiction. But science fiction is often just science before its time. Over the coming months, we will test these systems in the real world and continue refining them so we can turn their promise into reality. Here’s a video showing the building of Aquila.

Facebook reportedly testing Twitter-inspired news app

Social media giant Facebook could be planning to take on Twitter with a standalone news application for mobile devices.

According to Business Insider, the unnamed product is in its alpha stage of testing and will enable users to receive breaking news alerts of up to 100 characters from news organizations straight to their mobile devices.

Reportedly, the app will be part of Facebook's business initiative and will be utilized by select partner publications, at least for now.

"We don't comment on rumors or speculation," a spokesperson for Facebook told CNBC.

The company already produces several apps—Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Hyperlapse, Slingshot and Groups—and has been work-shopping new apps through Facebook Creative Labs.

Facebook may be developing Twitter-like news app

Why would Facebook acquire Twitter when it can develop its own mobile news application?

Mark Zuckerberg’s social media platform is working on a Twitter-like, stand-alone mobile news app as part of the Facebook for Business initiative, according to Business Insider, citing screenshots of the new product and a source close to the situation. Several companies have already been chosen by Facebook to pilot the app.

How it works

Users will download the new mobile app by Facebook and choose partnering publications and topics to follow. The partnering publications can break news on the app with mobile notifications that will be on par with the speed of Twitter.

The mobile alerts will allow up to 100 characters of text and a link to the news article on that publication's website. Publication partners can't create a notification to link to another site.

The app appears to be an improvement on Paper, Facebook’s experimental app that has the ability to follow news topics. Paper was last updated in March.

Mobile news push

The new product makes sense considering Facebook’s desire to become the go-to mobile news source.

Facebook launched “Instant Articles” in May, a new feature which allows the social media platform to host content from publishers directly on its app. Nine media companies agreed to participate in the initial rollout, including the New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC News, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Der Spiegel and Bild.

Facebook’s eventual goal is to let users do everything they need to do on the Internet without ever leaving Facebook. Their initial target is news junkies who comb through several different news sites each day.

Twitter

Turmoil at Twitter has many analysts pointing to the platform as a potential takeover target, with Facebook named as a potential suitor. But is Twitter a less appealing target if Facebook has its own mobile news app? It depends on how many users the new Facebook app can attract.

Facebook acquired instant messaging service WhatsApp last year to the tune of $22 billion. It may be interested in dominating how users communicate online and Twitter would be an important piece of that puzzle.