Facebook's Paper for iOS updated with birthdays, events, photo comments, group updates, and more
Facebook today released the first major update to its Paper for iOS app, adding a slew of new features just 10 weeks after the initial launch. You can download the new version now directly from Apple's App Store.
Context & Ripple Effects
Paper arrived at the end of January 2014 as Facebook's boldest rethink of mobile consumption, with reviewers arguing it blew the company's own main iPhone app out of the water. Framed by Re/code as a new answer for browsing and creating mobile media, it launched as a curated, card-based reader rather than a full Facebook replacement.
This first major update, just ten weeks after launch, pushes Paper toward core Facebook territory: birthdays, events, photo comments, and group updates are all notification-and-social-graph features that previously required the primary app. The unusually wide pickup — TechCrunch, PC Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, iMore and others all covered the release — reflects how much attention the experiment attracted.
First-order effects
- Paper users can now handle birthdays, events, group updates, and comment on photos without leaving the app, cutting the main Facebook app's monopoly on those everyday tasks.
Second-order effects
- Each added feature narrows the gap between Paper and the primary Facebook client, forcing the company to decide whether the app is a complement to the main experience or a parallel front door competing for the same sessions.
Third-order effects
- If the ten-week iteration cadence holds, Facebook is running its standalone apps as laboratories — shipping experimental interfaces fast, watching engagement, and folding what works back into the main product rather than betting everything on a single app.
The trend: Facebook is using standalone mobile apps as rapid-iteration experiments in social content consumption, with update frequency signaling which experiments earn continued investment.