Facebook’s Paper App launched for iPhone
Facebook’s new content discovery app that’s set to rival Flipboard, named Paper, has been released for iOS users in the US yesterday.
The app is free to download from the App Store for all iOS 7 users. The news comes as Facebook celebrates its tenth birthday today, ten years exactly since the social network first went online.
Paper is billed as a new way to discover stories through Facebook. It’s more image-centric than the traditional Facebook Timeline and supposedly features stories based on a user’s interests. The app has also been designed to be more intuitive as well, to allow users to flick through stories and view photos on full screen simply by tilting the phone.
For any users in countries other than the US or on Android, you’ll have a wait before you get to use this app. Facebook has confirmed to Pocket-Lint that it is focussed on making the app a success on iOS in the US before releasing it to international markets or other platforms.
However, not everyone is so excited about Facebook’s new app release. There’s already a pretty successful drawing app called Paper available on iPad, and Facebook’s app has led to a lot of confusion. FiftyThree, the creators of the original Paper app, have released a statement on their official blog asking Facebook to rename its app. Georg Petschnigg, the CEO of FiftyThree, said: “We think Facebook can apply the same degree of thought they put into the app into building a brand name of their own. An app about stories shouldn’t start with someone else’s story. Facebook should stop using our brand name.”
Paper might be a pretty generic name for an app, but as there’s already an application with a successful brand behind it, Facebook’s choice of name seems a little short-sighted. It’s probably not likely that Facebook will change its app name at this stage though, so hopefully branding will mean that app users will be able to tell the difference between the two.
