San Francisco: In an apparent effort to expand its reach outside Internet, Facebook on Wednesday announced that it has turned its Instant Articles format into an open platform, which could be used by any publisher from April 12. But the question which still remains is: Whether Instant Articles are good for publishers?

Since the launch last year,Facebook had adopted a policy of working directly with partnered publishers to onboard them to the option that makes their sites load faster inside the app of the social networking giant rather than in a web browser. The publishers will now be allowed to configure Instant Articles themselves using documentation of Facebook.

Instant Articles combines the desire of the tech giant for making user experience smoother and ultimately boosting the business of the company. The program bars the exits from Facebook. Rather than forcing the users to keep on waiting for web pages to slowly load which is quite frustrating and them closing the app or clicking away to another website after, Instant Articles keeps the users engaged by keeping them inside Facebook's garden where they see ads and connect with friends.

It is notable that Google is also gearing up to launch its similar Accelerated Mobile Pages product in late February. But Google is unlikely to compete with Facebook as publishers will be able to use Google's more open-ended AMP program to speed up their pages for all visitors.