Facebook’s Instant Articles service is now available for Android users, who will be able to load stories by certain publications “ten times faster than a standard mobile web article”.

The iPhone version was launched in October.

“We’ve been beta testing Instant Articles for Android with a small group of people on Facebook for several weeks, and as we saw on iPhone, the faster, richer reading experience inspires people to share Instant Articles with their friends more often than they do with standard web articles,” wrote Michael Reckhow, product manager, in a blog post.

More than 350 publications have joined Instant Articles from around the world, with more than 100 publishing stories every day, he added.

Asia and Latin America were the most recent regions to join. In LatAm, Facebook is partnering with 40 media organisations in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, while in Asia it is working with around 24 media outlets in 11 countries.

As Facebook looks to defend its position against rival social and news apps, it also introduced the Notify app, which delivers tailored news content to users.