Not long ago, Facebook released Paper as a new way to experience your Facebook news feed. Paper is part of Facebook’s efforts to turn the items in your news feed into a more interesting format rather than just a feed of text and photos. The preview video for Paper on Facebook’s page is quaint and endearing. The video is set in a world where everyone has interesting hobbies, takes good photos, and is breezy and witty with their status updates. A world where everything you share on Facebook is a story that belongs in a curated newspaper, alongside headline news, technology news, and other assorted elements to the Paper app.
The aim of the app is noble, to make the lives of the people around us into something worth talking about and sharing. Unfortunately for most of us our news feeds are filled with Vague-booking, mild complaints about the ending of a particular reality show, and memes. This is where Paper’s strength and weakness lies. The design and aesthetic of the app makes these stories look better, but it is unable to make the stories themselves any better. I’m sorry, this entire paragraph was way too snarky.
Paper also acts as a news reader, much like Flipboard. It allows you to add topics that interest you and encourages you, the user, to share news items on your own feed. It seems that the intention is to encourage users to share things that will spark passion and debate.
Personally, I enjoy using the paper app as an alternative way of interacting with Facebook content. It presents the feed in a much more interesting way that is simpler and more elegant to interact with. Honestly, after installing Paper it might be tempting to uninstall the standard Facebook app! I reccommend giving Paper a try. That is if you use Facebook.