Facebook Paper is a magazine style visual news reader and aggregator that will become available on February 3. Facebook announced the new app for mobile devices today, and some of the features I've seen put it squarely in competition with other visual newsreaders like Flipboard.
What does it do?
While I don't have any hands-on experience yet with Paper, it looks like a new way of browsing the latest news that defaults to your Facebook news feed. It displays stories in a new way with individual Facebook statuses across the bottom that you can swipe horizontally to browse. But if you swipe a friend's status upward, it zooms in to your friends latest status and lets you swipe vertically to browse more of the story (whether that's multiple photos, written words, or just comments from other friends).
Initially, it looks like it could be a completely new way to browse Facebook, though at this time it's hard to say if it's something we'll eventually see in the official Facebook app.
Statuses and news in one
Where Paper seems to step into Flipboard territory, is in a part of the app called Sections. In the top half of the screen, you'll see your Facebook feed is already selected by default, but in the lower half are a number of categories you can browse by swiping horizontally. From here you can drag categories to the top such as Headlines, Photography, or Food, to to add them to your main feed.
Sections also offers news from popular publications like CNN, the New York Times, and other sources, turning Paper into a visual news browser that has news from your friends alongside news of the world.
This is the first app from Facebook Creative Labs, the social-networking giant's recent initiative to create standalone apps using smaller teams of Facebook employees to mimic the feel of a startup.
The app will hit the iTunes App Store Monday, February 3, but there is no indication when it will be available for other devices, so check back then for my review of Facebook Paper.
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