 <p>Even if you could do this, the difference would be barely noticeable. JSON is parsed REALLY fast. What you need, I believe, is to make several timed calls, maybe using setInterval. This way you can request more content, say, every 2 seconds. If more content is found, append it to the existing one.</p> <p>If you already have all the content you will get, and want to "animate" the content being added, you can parse the JSON received as an object and do something like</p> <pre><code>for (var i=0; i&lt;content.length; setTimeout(i++, 1000)){ $(container).append(content[i]); } </code></pre>