Forbes rolls out new mobile site with faster download

Forbes on Tuesday is beginning the public roll out of its new mobile site, which it says loads in 0.8 seconds, down from anywhere from 3 to 12 seconds on its current mobile site, reports Joseph Lichterman of the Nieman Lab.

Lichterman writes, “As part of its new mobile site, Forbes is introducing a new story format called Cards (sound familiar?) that was modeled after Snapchat Stories. Users will be able to swipe through the stories, which can feature, photos, video, infographics, or quizzes.

“‘The way a mobile article is for most of the world right now is just a reformatted version of your desktop article,’ Zalatimo said. ‘When you take that away and start from just a mobile device and think about what is the best way to show this information on a mobile-only device — forget desktop for now, don’t worry about reformatting it for desktop, just for mobile — how different those experiences become. That’s why we looked at Snapchat for inspiration. It is the only mobile-only social network. There is no desktop version of it.’

“Forbes also created a new in-house ad format for the PWA site called Fluid, which is also meant to load quickly on mobile devices.

“Up to 60 percent of Forbes’ audience comes from mobile — and it expects that to reach 80 percent in the coming years.”

Read more here.