Facebook Paper Update Pushes Virality by Sending Download Links With Articles | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Paper Update Pushes Virality by Sending Download Links With Articles

techcrunch.com

25 pointsamitkumar019 comments

Hijacking sharing links is pretty widely frowned upon. I don't see this as much better.

Getting the first release was enough of a hassle that I'll probably stay stuck on v1.0 by taking no actions. (Logging out of appleid, creating a fake us apple id, signing in with it, "switching stores", downloading, signing out, signing back in with my regular apple id, and "switching stores" again). So, no automatic updates here.

I wonder when the Android version will land...

Probably never. Paper was spearheaded by ex-Apple iOS hackers inside of Facebook. I doubt they have any inclination of making an Android version.

Maybe if someone on Facebook's Android team decides they want do it? I just don't see this being a big push internally.

Paper seemed like an odd play for Facebook...I get on Facebook because I'm not intending to read news or anything deep...and yet I will read those if something compelling comes up in the news feed. So what's the value proposition of Paper? A prettier news feed, except just focused on news, and a streamlined way to share on Facebook?

Easing the way for sharing on Facebook is obviously valuable to FB, and to the kind of users who do like sharing links. But for the majority of casual users, there's already a way to do that: the normal Facebook app. The only thing missing is: the newsfeed being filled with actual news instead of baby pictures and Doge memes...but that's something that is completely within Facebook's control.

Why not just add a news filter to the status/newsfeed and train users to use it? That way we can quickly filter between friend status updates and stories shared in our network. The only Paper-feature that would be absent is the attractiveness of Paper...but, in the scheme of things, that seems to be a rather inconsequential feature compared to the burden of users switching to a whole new app and interface.

Facebook probably realizes they can make a lot of money by allowing publishers to push "featured" content out to people who Facebook knows will be interested in reading the content.

Notice how there are no ads in Paper? Probably setting the stage for exactly this.

their big strategy as of the last few years is to spin off features of its main app into multiple apps.

this has three benefits they want:

better app store coverage

better home screen coverage

fewer taps to do a task on facebook

Exactly how do any of these goals this help the non-FB-obsessed user?

Facebook needs to tie their monetization and growth strategy with, not orthogonal to, or in opposition to, the needs/desires of their user base.

Some people only use Facebook for feature X

For one group that might be Facebook messenger

For another it might be the news feed

Facebook sees single purpose apps (instagram, whatsapp) replacing facebook altogether. They're scrambling to compete directly (in some cases outright buying competitors).

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