Facebook Wants To Make You Read Facebook Paper

Facebook, never satisfied with its own ideas, is more than happy to crib the ideas of others. Their latest target of “homage” is Flipboard, with Facebook Paper.

The idea is, essentially, “Flipboard But Facebook.” And apparently it was what your News Feed was originally going to turn into, according to Recode:

Paper looks to be either a standalone mobile application or a Web experience suited to mobile devices… Paper and Flipboard share a number of similarities. Both essentially act as aggregators of rich media content, displaying a mix of news stories from publications like the New York Times or the Washington Post, along with status updates from Facebook users — all in a visually stunning “paper-like” format hearkening back to a time before digital devices.

In other words, it’s basically Flipboard with any serial numbers carefully filed off, and it’s likely only a matter of time before Facebook blocks your updates from being sent to Flipboard. That said, the big question is… will anyone use this? Facebook is doing this for the same reason Facebook does anything, because it thinks it can sell more ads this way. But it seems unlikely that users will want to download another Facebook app for the privilege of looking at the links they already have mixed in with Facebook updates, or go to a website to get what amounts to their News Feed in a different way.

On the other hand, we also thought auto-playing videos would be met with riots in the streets, so really, all bets are off. Keep an eye out for this to hit the web later in the month.

via Recode

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