Thursday morning the social networking behemoth announced Paper, a new app meant to rearrange the way you consume news. Or your Facebook news feed, at least.
The app, which started as a replacement for the long departed Google Reader, appears to pretty much be a knockoff of Flipboard — an earlier app that let you flip through website feeds, twitter links and Facebook status updates like pages in magazine. On Paper, you'll see the content from your Facebook feed without the actual clutter and Windows XP aesthetic of Facebook. Of course, that also means advertisers will have your full attention as you flip through their ads on your way to liking status updates and ignoring your friends' Buzzfeed quiz results.
In addition to letting you breeze through the news, you'll also be able to write lengthy blog-like status updates. There's also a nifty/nauseating feature where you can pan around fullscreen photos by tilting your phone. Videos will autoplay as they pop up in your feed, because making impressionable youths think they're watching a friend's Instagram video is the only way advertisers can trick them into watching commercials anymore.
Facebook Home, last year's big idea, had a similar concept, but was mostly a flop because no one liked Facebook enough to have the social network injected into every aspect of their smartphone. Still, mobile advertising makes up the majority of the company's ad revenue, so clearly people are spending a lot of time with Facebook on their phones.
Anyhow, the app comes out for iPhone on February 3rd. Here's the inspirational commercial: