Facebook is shutting down news creation and curation app Paper, reports The Verge. Paper, which debuted in 2014, was the first product to come out of Facebook Creative Labs, which has since been dismantled.
Paper, a Flipboard competitor, consisted of a news reader that pulled content from a user's Facebook News Feed and a variety of well-known online publications, organizing it all into a magazine-style layout with sections ranging from technology to animals. A team of editors curated the most popular online content for users and for a time, it was a popular replacement for the traditional Facebook News Feed.
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Though it received positive reviews and was one of Facebook's most downloaded apps, it was not able to attract and maintain a large audience, leading to Facebook's decision to shut it down. Paper has been defunct for a while, going without an update since March of 2015.
According to Facebook, many of the concepts introduced in Paper, like Instant Articles, have since been added to its other apps and services. Instant Articles is a platform designed to speed up the loading times of articles and news stories and it adopted much of its design language from Paper.
Paper has been removed from the App Store as of today and existing app users will no longer be able to use the app after July 29.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)When will Facebook do the same :p
They seem to be getting closer every day.