Facebook is killing off its Flipboard clone – Paper

Facebook is shutting down its news aggregation application, called Paper. Paper was intended as Facebook’s mechanism delivery of news, as alternative to Twitter or Google News. Paper was launched just one day before the 10th anniversary of Facebook, on 3 February 2014. It is an iOS exclusive application, available only in the US.

The Paper interface seemed to be heavily inspired from Flipboard  with the layout and animations being reminiscent of Flipboard. The interface was uncluttered, with a focus on large images and full screen videos. Paper has personalisation options, where people can choose content streams from a number of publishers that Facebook has tied up with. The stories served on paper are hand picked by a team hired by Facebook.

iOS users with the application now get a message announcing the shutdown of the application, reports Engadget. The application will stop allowing logins from Facebook after July 29. Although Paper will be shutdown, elements from Paper will be incorporated into the main Facebook application itself. This seems to be empty consolation because Facebook is back to giving preferential treatment to friends and family over reporting sources in its “News Feed”.

Paper is going to be available on the App Store for another month, for anyone who still wants to try it out. If the app is not showing in search results because your Apple account has its location set as India, there is a workaround to get the application.