Facebook shuts Paper news reading app

Social networking giant, Facebook has decided to shut Paper -- a news reading app that provides customised news spanning politics, technology, food and other fields.

The users who visited the app received a message saying the app would no longer function from July 29, The Verge reported on Friday.

"Our goal with Paper was to explore new immersive, interactive design elements for reading and interacting with content on Facebook, and we learned how important these elements are in giving people an engaging experience," the Facebook message read.

According to research firm App Annie, Paper has not been among the 1,500 most-downloaded apps since December 2014.

"It never came to Android, and the iOS version was last updated in March 2015," the report added.

Introduced in January 2014, Paper heralded a new design era at Facebook.

Paper has given way to Instant Articles that will give users a better and faster reading experience -- whether it is news, views or opinion pieces.

"To date, we have been working with a few hundred publishers around the world to build an incredibly fast and immersive reading experience for people on Facebook," Josh Roberts, product manager (Facebook), said in a statement recently.

With Instant Articles, publishers around the world can have full control over the look of their stories as well as data and ads.

They will have the ability to bring their own direct-sold ads and keep 100 per cent of the revenue, and track data on the ads served through their existing ad measurement systems or they can monetise their content through the Facebook Audience Network.

Additionally, the publishers can use their existing web-based analytics systems to track article traffic or use third-party providers.

--IANS

na/ksk