Facebook is shutting down its dedicated news app, Paper

Facebook waves goodbye to the app that inspired Instant Articles

Facebook has announced that it plans to shut down its standalone news reading app, Paper. In a message to the app’s users, Facebook thanks them for using the service but states that the app will be removed from the App store and that existing users will no longer be able log in from July 29.

The app was introduced in January 2014 and was intended to showcase articles rather than status updates from family and friends. Though Paper was advert free, and featured some novel visual design features, it never quite managed to increase its popularity, perhaps in part due to the fact that it was only available on iOS devices. Though Facebook never released user numbers for the app, its product design lead Mike Matas tweeted his disappointment that it would be shutting down and thanked the hundred thousand people still using it – a very low number considering Facebook has over one billion users.

Since the app fell quickly from the app download charts not long after its launch, Facebook’s decision hasn’t come as a complete surprise and the signs that Paper wasn't proving as successful as Facebook would have liked were already there; the app hadn’t been updated since March 2015 and Creative Labs, the internal design team behind it, was closed down in December 2015.

Considering the recent news that Facebook is planning to change its News Feed algorithm to favour posts from users’ family and friends, the news-deidcated Paper app might actually have proven useful for publishers who could now find it more diffiult to attract readers using the platform.

However, for any remaining fans of Paper, Facebook says that ideas from the standalone app are being recycled and appearing on the main Facebook app in the form of Instant Articles. Built by the same team behind Paper, Instant Articles uses many of the same tools and design elements and Facebook says it hopes users will “continue to notice elements from Paper improving the Facebook experience for everyone."