Facebook is getting ready to launch a digital newspaper of
sorts, and it's appropriately named "Paper," according to Recode.
Paper could be delivered before the end of January, the blog reported.
The application is said to be for mobile devices and is similar
in nature to the popular social news reader Flipboard, meaning it will
aggregate content from a variety of sources including status updates from Facebook
and articles from partner media companies.
"We do not comment on rumours and speculation," a
Facebook spokesperson told CNET.
The social network's ambitions to become a daily destination for
your news-reading attention have been made plain to the world for some time. In
2013, the company made a number of changes to stress its connection to what's
happening in the world right now. And, most recently, Facebook made a
semi-controversial alteration to the formula behind News Feed to emphasize
news articles over memes.
If real, Paper will need to offer the social network's members
something more compelling than Flipboard and other incumbents in the digital
news reading space, as well as an experience superior to the Facebook social
readers of yore, which were delivered by third-party publishers, such as The
Washington Post. Facebook has also proved itself a poor copycat, particularly
evidenced by the failure of its Snapchat clone, Poke.
