TECHNOLOGY TIPS

Christy BourgeoisPhyllis Babin

Kristin DupuyBecky Templet

ETEC 646_90

Facebook introduces a much anticipated app, called ‘Paper’ on Monday, February 3, 2014.

It’s more than just a news reading app. It is Facebook reimaged in order to offer a more personalized stream of news.

Born Online, Facebook Now Wants to Be Your ‘Paper”

The content comes from outside sources, based on links shared by the social network’s 1.2 billion users. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Time Magazine were used during Facebook’s recent demonstration of the app.

It is an ad-free app (for now).

The app will only be available for iPhone users; there is no date set for Android users.

It also isn’t available on desktops or tablets.

According to the article on The Verge, “Each section in Paper has a main screen with a cover photo and a list of small cards at the bottom. You can scroll through or drill into the cards, at which point you'll be swiping through one card at a time.”

This article claims that the app will blow the current Facebook app for iPhone out of the water.

However, according to Facebook product designer Mike Matas and product manager Michael Reckhow they feel, “you shouldn't have to choose between one or the other,” when they were asked if this app should serve as a replacement for the original Facebook app.

You can post to Paper (and thus Facebook) in a new kind of compose screen.

Paper has some important new features, including an interactive way of looking at photos that utilizes gyroscopic and other sensors inside mobile phones. The feature allows users to pan back and forth across a photo simply by moving the phone from side to side.

The app was demonstrated to the The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, showing off important new features, including an interactive way of looking at photos. The first section of the new app will be your Facebook News Feed with a new design. It will present your friends' posts, along with stories from other news categories, in a slicker, prettier package, but without all the functions of the original Facebook app.

Users can customize the app by adding more than a dozen other topics. The app displays information in segments — such as Headlines, Pop Life, Score, Enterprise and Home – similar to the sections of a newspaper. Clicking on a section opens a preview of articles. Users can open an article by swiping their fingers across it, causing an animation of a piece of paper being peeled back.

VIDEO

http://vimeo.com/85761988

Works Cited

Albergotti R. (January 30, 2014). WSJ Digital. In Born Online Facebook Now Wants to Be Your 'Paper'. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/01/30/born-online-facebook-now- wants-to-be-your-paper/?mod=trending_now_2.

Bohn D. (January 30, 2014). The Verge. In With Paper, Facebook just blew its own iPhone app out of the water. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/30/5360358/facebook-paper-iphone-app.

Gross D. (January 30, 2014). CNN Tech. In Facebook launches Paper, a news-reading

app. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/30/tech/social-media/facebook-paper.