The New York Times is working on the new “instant article” format Google and Twitter want to launch this fall.
The New York Times and The Guardian Sign On for Google and Twitter’s Instant Article Push
Coming this fall.
Alex Ulreich for Re/code
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
“We’re working with Google and we’re involved as both a publishing and a technology provider,” Times rep Eileen Murphy told Re/code via email. Murphy confirmed that she was referring to Google’s plan to create an open-source “instant article” format that would allow mobile users to quickly pull up stories.
The Times itself reports that British newspaper the Guardian is also working with Google and Twitter.
The Times and the Guardian were some of the first publishers to join Facebook’s instant articles program last spring. The Google/Twitter plan is seen as response to Facebook’s push, as well as other proprietary publishing programs launched by the likes of Snapchat and Apple.
A word about whose program this actually is: Both Google and Twitter executives say both companies are working on the project, and that they hope that a consortium of technology companies eventually embrace the plan. But as Fortune noted earlier today, publishing executives often speak about the project as a Google-led plan.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
