Facebook’s Flipboard-incarnate Paper was teased during the latter stages of last week, and now, the social company’s iPhone app is now officially available for download.
Having observed the App Store and Google Play over the past couple of years with a vested interest, I have seen quite a few start-ups try and emulate the success of Flipboard. Harboring that rarest of qualities of being efficient, functional and beautiful all at the same time, the so-called ‘social magazine’ is used by millions, but while competition has been rather easy to brush aside, Facebook Paper poses a real threat to Flipboard’s dominance.
Mark Zuckerberg’s team has toiled over the project for a number of months, and besides the fact that, because it’s from Facebook, it has a massive jump-start, the app is actually pretty beautiful. As we saw in the preview video, it’s nicely interactive, heavily gesture-based, and content seems to just flow, irrespective of whether its a news report, shared photo or Internet meme.
As you’d expect, everything is closely tied with your Facebook profile, so while this helps you find the content you want to see, it also greatly benefits Facebook in that it can gather even more information on your habits which can be then used for strategic advertising.
Nevertheless, for the newsy, the inquisitive, or just fans of great user interfaces, Paper has quite a bit to offer, and if you want to check it out for yourself, it’s now available over at the App Store. Please note, however, that this app is currently only optimized for the iPhone, and although we’d expect an iPad version to follow at some stage in the future, it is, at the moment, only designed for the smaller display.
The app is absolutely free to download, and we’ve got the direct link just below. So grab it, give it a try on your iPhone / iPod touch, and be sure to leave your thoughts and critiques via the usual channels.
Also, it’s worth noting that the app is currently only available in the US App Store. For those living in other regions are out of luck for now, but we expect a full rollout to happen soon in the coming weeks.
(Download: Facebook Paper for iPhone on the App Store)
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