Facebook is launching the new social news app ‘Paper’ for iOS devices, in a bid to challenge the news and social aggregator apps like Flipboard, which presents stories in a magazine-style layout.
Planned to be rolled out on Monday, the new app would radically overhaul how users view status updates, photographs and videos posted by contacts, the company said.
The slick, gesture-driven app will also come with several sections agregating news stories and other links being shared by contacts and splits them into sections to create a customised news service.
It would allow navigating via users news feed item-by-item by swiping a finger, while images come out full-screen together with captions above them. Users can even pan from left to right just by slanting their device.
In addition, users can customise their feeds with a range of over dozen sections, themes and topics varying from photography to food, each incorporating "a rich mix of content from emerging voices and well-known publications", the social network added.
The ‘Paper’ app will also allow users to directly post stories to Facebook via a new editor similar to latest web publishing tools that allow users to preview their posts prior to publishing.
