Isaac insists that despite the lack of news from the company itself, Paper is real, and unless something dire happens (such as user testing indicating that no one wants or will use it) Paper will be out and available for use before the end of the month.The bill would apply only to counties with populations greater than 2.7 million, effectively singling out Harris County, which is home to Houston and has by far the largest population in the state, at nearly 5 million. The difference with Facebook is that news items will be mixed in with posts from friends, providing one place for people to find out everything they want to know about people they know, as well as what's going on in the rest of the world.įacebook itself isn't commenting on Paper, insisting they don't discuss rumors, speculation, etc. Of course, Facebook isn't alone in this line of reasoning, others sites (such as Flipboard) offer newsreaders that do much the same thing. If it can do that, then the thinking is, people will want to log in just to see what's been posted.

The idea behind Paper is to display news items that Facebook thinks people will find interesting. To stem that tide, Facebook is apparently trying to add services that will cause users to want to visit the site even if their friends have stopped posting interesting things. It's no secret that Facebook has been investigating ways to get people to keep on logging into its world-wide phenomenon (with over a billion users) on a regular basis, particularly as many media sources have been claiming that young people are abandoning Facebook for newer and cooler sites.

Flipboard paper