Facebook has announced the launch of a new app called Paper that will combine its social network experience with the news.
According to the Verge, Paper operates just like Facebook's mobile app sans some of the social network's features. Paper may not have all of Facebook's apps, but the News Feed is recreated and improved.
Paper is first and foremost a news-reading app, but its horizontal scrolling tool feature is a re-imagination of the Facebook News Feed altogether. Paper, whose design was inspired by Flipboard and the blogging systems of Medium and Svbtle, will be released Feb. 3.
"Paper cuts away virtually all buttons and other UI elements to make every status update, photo, and news story appear full-screen," Dieter Bohn wrote for the Verge. "To get around, you will need to learn a basic set of gestures, but the app will gently remind you what they are if it thinks you're stuck. Wide photos pan as you tilt the phone (the team cheekily calls it the 'Ken turns' effect), UI elements often just fade away, and news stories are presented in Twitter-esque cards."
The cards will be featured in each section on Paper and the user will swipe through them one at a time. Product designer Mike Matas said this feature will try to give the user a more relaxed approach to reading the content.
"You really want people to spend a little bit of time with it and appreciate that content," he told the Verge, "almost like when you go to a museum and you spend a little bit of time with each thing."
Facebook has been slowly churning out standalone mobile apps that isolate a feature to its own experience, such as Pages, Camera and Messenger. Paper is the first one of these standalone apps to come out of Facebook's new Creative Labs and is likely the first of what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called "new and engaging types of mobile experiences."
Bohn wrote that Paper will make some people stop using Facebook's main app altogether, even though its not the intended purpose of the new app. As with all of Facebook's standalone apps, Paper is meant to supplement the main one, not replace it.
"If Paper does score a slot on your main home screen, another app will probably have to be buried away somewhere else," Bohn wrote. "For a lot of people, Facebook itself will be a prime candidate."
