Facebook has announced a new mobile app named Paper that could see the social network control a significant portion of the digital news market.
The app will launch on 3
February for the iPhone in the US and promises a “distraction-free layout” by
pulling in new stories from various media publications - both the established
and the “emerging”.
Working with human editors, Paper will curate various sections
(including sport, food, science and photography) whilst also allowing users to
customize their own feed. Traditional updates and pictures from users’ friends
will also be available in the app, but they will be kept separate from the news
stories.
In terms of visual style and navigation, Paper appears very
similar to news-curating app Flipboard. Users’ navigate through Paper with a
series of swipes; going from left to right to flip through stories, and pulling
up or down to expand or shrink content.
Users can also tilt their phone to pan through panorama photos
whilst small, context-rich ‘cards’ are used to compress stories. This latter
concept is becoming increasingly common online, with both Twitter and Google
Now using these small packages of information to break up the ‘firehose’ of
information online.
Paper is the first major step in Facebook’s ambitions to create
“new and engaging types of mobile experience” in 2014,and some commentators
believe that the app might even supplant Facebook’s current offering.
Paper doesn’t offer quite as many features as the standalone
version of Facebook, but plenty of other apps have won over users by offering
them a single service as simply as possible. Complex navigation doesn’t always
transfer well from PCs to mobile, and Paper looks to offer a stripped down approach
to Facebook that could appeal to many.
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