Washington Post to roll out speedy mobile news site

The Washington Post announced Tuesday it was rolling out a "lightning-fast" mobile news site that would provide near-instant load times for both articles and advertising.

The Post, purchased in 2013 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, said in a statement was combining its own technology with Progressive Web Apps and the Google-led Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technologies "to create a better user experience" for readers.

The statement said the Post would be creating a "lightning-fast mobile web experience, radically enhancing its mobile news site with near-instant load times for both content and advertising."

Load times on the new mobile site will be near-instant at less than one second, according to the statement. Ads and images will load immediately even when there is low bandwidth, spotty signals, or no Wi-Fi service, it said.

"Mobile is the future. Our goal was to create the fastest mobile news site, setting a new standard of speed," said Shailesh Prakash, chief technology officer for the Post.

"By the end of the year, this will be our default mobile experience—one that delivers extremely fast articles and ads while protecting a user's privacy. We've already seen a significant increase in engagement from users since we launched in beta and expect to see more as we expand to our entire user base."

Under Bezos, the prominent but struggling daily has upgraded its technology and boosted its digital readership as it seeks to challenge The New York Times as the country's newspaper of record.

© 2016 AFP