• The new app asks if the social network is cannibalising itself
Rumours about a Facebook news reader app have been circulating for years, and now they’ve not only come true, they could spell the end of the Facebook app as we know it.
Paper is a news curation and reader app that pulls in stories, photos, videos and links from the user’s Facebook feed – alongside Facebook’s own notification bar and action buttons.
All stories are displayed on a customisable picture-led grid, and the app has been designed to make it easier to share content with other people.
Users can also browse content and read stories from partner publications, as well as customise which categories they see.
Paper is set to launch in the U.S. on 3 February.
The app looks similar to news reader rivals Flipboard and Google Currents.
Each section has a main screen with a cover photo at the top, and a row of content along the bottom.
Users can scroll left and right from the main screen through these content cards to see new stories, photos, videos, and so on.
Alternatively, with Paper, users can select a story to see it in full screen mode.
The traditional Facebook notification bar is shown in the top right-hand corner of the screen – including friend requests, messages and other notifications.
When viewing individual stories, Facebook actions buttons are shown in the bottom left-hand corner, including like, comment and share.
Similarly, users can post straight to Facebook from the Paper app – making the original Facebook app, in theory, redundant.
All sections are customisable and users can change the cover photo, as well as the name of sections and the layout.
When viewing content from select publications, users can filter by category and choose their favourite news outlets.
Yet unlike other news reader and RSS apps, Facebook Paper will not let people add their own links.
Paper is the first app to be developed in Facebook’s Creative Labs that was set up last year.
Facebook has a history of developing separate apps for new features, such as the Facebook Messenger and Camera apps.
Like Paper, these apps linked with the original Facebook app but had their own set of features.
Facebook Messenger lets people chat while using other apps, for example.
Paper, on the other hand, includes many of Facebook’s existing features and could challenge
