Apple takes on Facebook Instant Articles and Google News with News Format

Apple has announced its iOS News app will be available in a news format to all content creators to publish their work on the platform with rich design and improved user interface. With the latest Apple News Format, all the content creators, including large media houses to individual bloggers, writers, and photography enthusiasts can own up a content management system in the app and publish their work for Apple users.

"News Publisher makes it easy for anyone, from major news organizations and magazines to blogs and independent publications, to distribute interactive and engaging stories in News. With Apple News Format, you can create engaging content for Apple News. Elegant layouts, beautiful typography, photo galleries, videos, and animations bring your stories to life," the description on the Apple News page elaborates.

The new format automatically syncs with all iOS 9 devices supporting the News app. The platform also features an in-built advertising tool (iAd advertisements), a web-based editing tool, content management system and Apple News API tool. Under the terms of the advertising tool, content creators can keep the entire revenue from ads if they sell them, or 70% if Apple sells them (similar to the arrangement in the app store).

Other resources available are publisher overview to get a summary of publisher news and creative specifications to build and publish own ads, format reference to get a technical guide to the new format and API reference to learn about connecting the CMS with the Apple News API.

The web editing tool provides a range of styles and fonts for the writers and tools to upload and share high-resolution images and video content. It also offers an analytics tool to understand the readers and their choices.

Apple News competes with Facebook's Instant Articles, Google News and other third-party providers of news on mobile like Flipboard. Earlier in January, Apple partnered with major news publishers to like Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Economist to provide subscribed content to users within the app. It has also partnered with over 20 publishers to bring content on the platform.