Paper is Facebook's app reboot. Image based, gesture controlled, minimal, and task focused it is designed to be the opposite of the Facebook that mobile users have come to know.
The first thing you’ll notice is how different of an experience Facebook created with the app. The main Facebook app relies on menus and buttons to show the user where to go. Launching it puts you in front of 11 different buttons: Search, Menu, Status, Photo, Check In, News Feed, News Feed again with a different use, People, Messages, Notifications, and More to use in addition to reading the app’s content. Paper, on the other hand, puts three: Friend Requests, Messages, and Notifications. The lack of options is refreshing, as Paper focuses less on Facebook and more on your friends.
The content, especially photos, is the most prominent visual difference between the two apps. Here, Facebook displays status updates and photos as cards (webOS faithful will tell you all about those benefits) at the bottom of the screen for you to scroll through. Swipe up, more on that later, or click on one and it takes over the whole screen. This is a stark change from the menu dominated system Facebook relies on in the main application. At the expense of speed you can then slide the card over to go to the next full screen status update and read through your newsfeed one by one. Alternatively, you could read them all as small cards on the app’s home screen at the expense of legibility. Doing it this way results in a lot of squinting.
The top portion of the screen is dedicated to highlights from your Newsfeed. Facebook puts there what it thinks you’ll want to see and scrolls through it. I’ve noticed that it tends to pick people and items that you’ve already interacted with as opposed to things you would want to see. “Like” something in your Newsfeed and it will show up as a highlight in the next refresh. Cute, but not entirely useful. Swipe over on that highlight though and you’ll see something new from Facebook: Sections. Facebook turns itself in to a news aggregator. You can pick what topics that you’re most interested in and the app will show you news stories from outlets and their Facebook updates.
Back to gestures. Instead of 11 buttons Facebook has adopted four swipes and a tap as their navigation of choice. Swiping left or right always brings you to your next set of updates or photos. Swiping up from the Newsfeed cards will act like tapping on it and make the card go full screen – where you can then swipe left or right to go forward or back in the timeline. Swipe up on an article or photo to open it in an excellent full screen browser and swipe down to go back to the card. From here you can swipe down to minimize the card and return home. Swipe down from a highlighted story and you get a menu to Search, view your profile, create a post, edit your sections, and a settings menu. Using all of these gestures creates a fluid but sometimes slower experience than just reading a news stream. It is possible for something to feel faster because of how you’re using it but still be slower. Unfortunately the up and down swipes interfere with Apple’s Notification Center and Control Center gestures. Considering that these are system level features it is pretty annoying to not get them on first swipe.
One thing I haven’t been able to figure out yet is how Paper intends for users to share to services like Pocket. The option sometimes appears in a button in the web browser and other times doesn’t. There is probably a reason, but if that logic isn’t readily apparent then that is a problem in an otherwise easy to understand app.
The Good:
- Facebook puts its user’s content first. It has never been more enjoyable to view status updates
- Gestures are natural and feel fast, even if they aren’t necessarily faster than the main Facebook app
- The full screen browser is excellent.
The Bad:
- While the individual updates and gestures feel more immersive and faster it is a slightly slower way to Facebook.
- If you do try to power through updates as part of the card interface you may need glasses.
- Control Center and Notification Center are harder to get to here than other apps because of similar gestures.
- No iPad version. Going back and forth between the two versions is jarring due to how different they look and work.
The Bottom Line:
With Paper Facebook built an app that centers on content. There is far less noise here than in the main Facebook app – and if you just want to know about the lives of the people you’re friends with this will make your experience far more enjoyable.
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