Earlier this month a report surfaced suggesting that Facebook is well on its way to developing a new news aggregation application called "Paper." At first, it sounded like the app was just going to offer a new way to read your Facebook News Feed, combined with posts from friends and information on trending topics. Now, it sounds like Facebook may add its own touch, too.
According to a report from Re/Code, which first broke news on the Paper application, Facebook has been working to hire editors who will curate news for Paper, instead of relying entirely on generated content. The editors will work to drum up content for 10 specific news categories, Re/Code said, though the site declined to identify those verticals. Our best guess? We'll see content from popular categories such as business, sports, tech, politics and more. Presumably, users of the Paper app could choose which verticals they are most interested in, and then only have that content displayed, making it feel more personal.
For now, it doesn't sound like Facebook has any plans to generate its own news content, written by its own staff of editors and writers, but instead will focus on pulling together what it finds to be the most important stories. Re/Code says it has learned that the app could appear "in the coming weeks," though Facebook has spent years developing it. The social network will definitely need to show how its own offering stacks up against Flipboard and other competitors, however, which already do a pretty solid job of generating stories based off of a user's interests.
