The New Facebook App Is Here And It's Pretty Amazing

Anybody that knows even a little bit about the app market knows that its customers are notoriously hard to please. Facebook FB hasn’t scored many big wins among the app crowd but it’s new app, Paper, is good—really good, in fact. So good, that after only one day on the app store, it has 4.5 out of 5 stars and more than 3,000 reviews.

First, what is Paper? Paper is a new way to interact with Facebook that is more visually rich and interactive. When you first download the app, visual and audio instructions show you how to interact with the user interface (UI) and in less than a minute, after picking your areas of interest, you’re interacting with the app.

Paper mixes your newsfeed with content from other sources making it feel a lot like a cross between the traditional Facebook and visually-driven news apps.

The app feels like the future of Facebook. Many are speculating that this will become the next Facebook interface across the entire site, especially since Facebook is quickly moving towards a predominately mobile experience.

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“Picking up a feed on your phone is nowhere near the experience of picking up your favorite magazine and flipping through it,” says Mike Matas, the lead designer on the new app. "The plan for Paper was to change that.”

Other articles about the app say it all. One says, “Facebook’s Paper App for iPhone Is the Future of Facebook.” Another reads, “Facebook just blew its own iPhone app out of the Water.”

For now, the app is only available on the iPhone. There’s no Android or even an iPad offering as of yet, but it’s hard to imagine that those aren’t coming, given the rave reviews so far.

Questions remain, of course. What about people who regularly use features not included in the new app? Events or pages, for example?

Paper was developed by a small team of developers that functioned like a startup within the Facebook ecosystem and it shows. Although there were no mobile ads to be found, that’s sure to change.

Paper is likely to be a major win for Facebook and will cause advertisers to rethink their advertising strategy to match the more visually rich experience.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Tim Parker had no position in the company mentioned.