Facebook is shutting down Paper, a bold reimagining of the company's flagship app for iOS that impressed critics but failed to attract a large audience, the company said today. The app transformed the core Facebook experience into a kind of newsreader, with customizable sections for politics, technology, food, and other subjects. Visitors to the app received a message saying the app would no longer function after July 29th.
When it was introduced in January 2014, Paper signaled the beginning of a design renaissance at Facebook. The look and feel of the app were orchestrated by Mike Matas, whose design firm Push Pop Press was acquired by Facebook in 2011. Paper was notable for the novel animations it used to guide you through the app — tap on a link and it would unfold like a letter; pull down on the story and it would fold back up, returning you to the feed.
The app was praised by design nerds (and people who enjoyed using Facebook without seeing any ads). But despite the enormous growth of Facebook, which surged to 1.09 billion daily users this year, Paper has not been among the 1,500 most-downloaded apps since December 2014, according to research firm App Annie. It never came to Android, and the iOS version was last updated in March 2015. Creative Labs, the initiative inside Facebook that built Paper and several other experimental apps, was shuttered in December. At that point, Paper's eventual shutdown seemed likely. Matas left the company earlier this year.
Facebook says that ideas from Paper have made their way into other Facebook apps, most notably Instant Articles, the fast-loading story format that the company introduced last year. Instant Articles borrowed several design elements from Paper, including full-bleed images and custom designs for individual publishers' articles. "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 company said in its message to users.
Paper will be removed from the App Store later today.
Comments
My wife liked this app a lot more than the regular Facebook app on her iPhone and actually completely removed the regular Facebook app after a while and used Paper exclusively. I would say she would be sad to see it go, but she left Facebook altogether a few months ago. I guess now there’s even less reason to come back.
I’m still on Facebook, but I haven’t had their app installed on my Android phone in years because it’s bloated, runs in the background, it drags down the performance of your phone, and who knows how much data it’s collecting about your phone usage and sending back to the mothership. I just have a link to the website on my home screen and still get notifications through the browser.
By gtg465x on 06.30.16 4:08pm
Yup. I liked Paper, and my wife still uses it. I’ve uninstalled all software from Facebook and only use the web interface at this point.
By CPD_1 on 06.30.16 7:17pm
I have both Paper and FB on my phone and Paper is the app that lives on my home screen. This sucks.
By GrahamEnos on 06.30.16 4:11pm
Same. Although the writing was on the wall that it was going to come to an end eventually. Something tells me my Facebook usage will plummet…
By ColinR on 06.30.16 7:46pm
Was a neat app, but I ended up preferring the traditional interface. This one was a just little fiddly for just trying to scroll through my feed and see at a quick glance what was going on. Made me feel like I wasn’t quite seeing everything I’d otherwise see.
I do think the rest of Facebook (including in the regular mobile app) could use some of the design polish that went into Paper though.
By brian.ward on 06.30.16 4:12pm
Damn it. I still use this app daily and prefer it to the regular FB app. I like that my personal feeds and news feeds were in different sections.
Any good alternatives?
By oghowie on 06.30.16 4:21pm
For those of you who don’t like or want to use the full regular Facebook app, I do recommend Friendly in the app store. It’s basically the mobile site in an app, but it let’s you color code it, have multiple profiles, and if you pay for the app, you can block ads. I like it (mostly because I have 2 accounts).
Cheers!
By aarontsuru on 06.30.16 4:33pm
Fuckers. Getting rid of the only thing that made their service visually appealing and conceptually engaging. Yet another reason to quit Facebook, I guess…
By obviousguiri on 06.30.16 4:37pm
I remember when this app first came out because of the drama it created by using the same name as the amazing drawing/painting/sketching app Paper made by 53. I wanted to try Facebook’s Paper app but never had the chance since I live in Canada…
By Shmaff on 06.30.16 4:49pm
Well that’s one less product named "Paper"… I really liked it though. It had very "sticky" and addictive UI. Nothing else like it really. Maybe this will make room on the App Store for Paper by Dropbox… Which is also really good!
By ColinR on 06.30.16 7:50pm
I deleted the regular Facebook app from my phone months ago, once Paper goes I have no intention of reinstalling it. I think Facebook might have just inadvertently provided me with the push I needed to abandon their whole ecosystem.
By FlyLikeAMouse on 06.30.16 6:08pm
This was the last reason I still had Facebook on mobile. It’s gone after this. No looking back. This is finally the push I needed, because I refuse to put the glorified bloat ware that is the regular Facebook app on my phone. Peace Facebook. Good riddance.
By ncatelli on 06.30.16 9:20pm
It was also the last way to have the main FB app and messenger rolled into one. I always thought those chat heads were fun and a revelation when we first saw them 2 years ago.
By D.A.J on 06.30.16 9:43pm
Yup. Besides being a nice app to browse stuff on FB, the main use I had for it was checking messages. I do not want Messenger on my phone. I know they killed or are about to kill messages on the mobile site as well… Dunno if you’ll be able to fool it in iOS by requesting the desktop site or not… but boo.
By fastasleep on 06.30.16 10:35pm
I still use chat heads on my Nexus 7, but I don’t think iOS allows them to draw over other apps so the Android-only nature of the feature pretty much consigns it to the forgotten pile at Facebook.
By GambaKufu on 07.01.16 4:54am
Facebook is not about superior products. It´s about the lowest common denominator to appeal to the masses. It makes me kind of ashamed to use any of its products, really.
By marc__prez on 06.30.16 11:04pm
Sad. So sad.
By eullman on 06.30.16 11:35pm
I would use this app all the time because it was really fun. Also it had messages and did not show me junk like videos and quiz links. I much prefer to see friend’s photos and status updates believe it or not.
Don’t even have the messenger app or Facebook one. If I need to check something I just use the janky mobile website.
By elijah_ on 07.01.16 1:27am
Maybe if it was available outside the US and was called something else then it might have taken off. Idiots.
By Fox McCloud on 07.01.16 2:37am
I find it strange that every web news channel reporting the shutdown of paper talk exclusively about the instant articles and news parts of this app. That is not what made paper amazing. One of the biggest plusses was the ability to have everything in one app: Facebook Messenger included. The slick design make scrolling through images and sad depressing posts of ex’s more bearable than ever before.
If Facebook cannot integrate the most integral parts of Paper into its actual app this is just sad… i am going to go delete paper and stare at my home screen for a while.
By ejshoe on 07.01.16 9:43am
The app Paper is already removed from the App Store
By oliversl on 07.01.16 2:24pm
Mine had stopped updating as of the announcement yesterday, so I forced quit it and refreshed it. Now absolutely nothing shows up besides the shutting down message. Not only did they get rid of their best app, they did it in a crappy way.
By obviousguiri on 07.01.16 4:06pm
Gorgeous app, but ultimately people don’t like horizontal scrolling in a newsfeed.
By victorstuber on 07.04.16 2:26am