The Telegraph, Financial Times and the Guardian are among a large number of publishers that have joined a new open-sourced initiative which hopes to improve browsing on mobile devices.
The Accelerated Mobile Project (AMP), which has also gained the support of Conde Nast, Hearst, BuzzFeed and the BBC, loads stories from around the web more quickly on phones and tablets using mobile-optimised HTML.
Tech and social giants including Google, Twitter and LinkedIn, have also partnered with AMP, which describes itself as “seamless, simplified publishing” in a “slow, clunky and frustrating” mobile web environment.
“Since AMP HTML is built on existing web technologies, and not a template based system, publishers continue to host their own content, innovate on their user experiences, and flexibly integrate their advertising and business models – all within a technical architecture optimised for speed and performance,” AMP states.
With mobile advertising forecast to overtake newspaper advertising next year, the promise of a more efficient mobile browsing experience will surely come as a relief to publishers looking to better monetise their digital content.
Guardian News & Media’s chief strategy officer, Tony Danker, said that the project will play a “vital” role in the future of journalism.
“It seeks simultaneously to create a great user experience, to give more autonomy to publishers to deliver that and to develop effective advertising for the mobile web,” he said.
“Achieving these in tandem will be vital to building a more sustainable ecosystem where great journalism can flourish. We are keen to see it succeed.”
A full list of publishers and technology partners can be found here.
