Facebook drops Paper app

The last of Facebook’s Creative Labs experiments is biting the dust. Facebook is shutting down its app that you probably don’t know about called Paper. It brought a clean and ad-free look into your News Feed while putting in some stories from your favorite news outlets. You’d see photos and stories cycle through without the added distraction of automatically playing videos and ads. Plus, news stories were arranged by topic, letting you browse through stories that really interest you. It’s even in this platform that Facebook’s fast-loading Instant Articles was developed. The app even let you send and respond to Facebook messages without leaving Paper. Of course, we know how Facebook wants you to use the Messenger app. But now the app has been pulled from app stores and users won’t be able to log in after July 29^th.

Source: MacWorld

Paper app CEO urges Facebook to rename story-telling app

On more Facebook-related news, Facebook is being asked by a mobile app developer FiftyThree to rename its recently launched Paper app in the US only. The company’s CEO Georg Petschnigg wrote on FiftyThree’s blog to ask Facebook to “stop using our brand name.” The developer launched a pretty popular app in the App Store called Paper back in 2012.

While Facebook apologized for the confusion, Petschnigg still believes the social network should change its new iOS app’s name. “We think Facebook can apply the same degree of thought they put into the app into building a brand name of their own. An app about stories shouldn’t start with someone else’s story.”