Chat app Telegram was ahead of the curve on bots – has it just kicked off another race to create chat-optimised publishing formats?

Instant View, launched overnight, is Telegram’s answer to Facebook’s Instant Articles (added to Messenger in July), Google’s AMP and Apple News: a way for publishers to make sure content loads quickly.

For now it’s only being used by publications using Medium, and TechCrunch, but the announcement promises:

“Eventually we want to provide Instant View pages for every story on the Web”

If you’ve watched the shifts in user behaviour from web to social, and then from social to chat, you can see what might be coming next: another battle to optimise for where the eyeballs are.

This is what an Instant View article looks like within the Telegram app

…And an anonymous publishing platform

As well as announcing its new article format Telegram has launched an anonymous publishing CMS: Telegra.ph.

One of Telegram’s major selling points is its security and Telegra.ph is a perfect extension to that.

I’ve used the new CMS to write more about how it works.