Facebook is reportedly readying its very own news reader app for mobile devices known as "Paper" and is expected to announce it in the coming weeks.
According to a report from re/code, the social network has carried out plenty of research over the years to develop the "Paper" news reader specifically for mobile devices. It is still unknown whether "Paper" will be a fully standalone mobile application or a name given to the mobile web experience. Sources familiar with the matter have notified re/code that, the application is similar to Flipboard, which aggregates and presents news items from across the internet in a magazine like interface.
"Paper" is said to be a part of the project internally referred to as "Project Reader." The team behind the Facebook News Feed is working on this project led by by Chris Cox, Facebook’s VP of product. Some of the changes made to the News Feed back in March 2013 were also part of this broader project which has been under development for quite some time. The report mentions that Mark Zuckerberg has also been directly involved with the project. One of the designers involved with the project is Mike Matas of Push Pop Press, which has a book publishing application for the iPad acquired by Facebook in 2011.
It will be interesting to see whether Facebook launches "Paper" by the end of January and how it plans to engage users who generally tend to ignore most new applications and features introduced by the social networking giant.
Source: re/code | Image via Facebook
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