Facebook announced a new app Thursday called Paper that will be available February 3. Rather than updating their old app, they simply created a new one from the ground up (though with similarities to an earlier app called Facebook Home). Like the hugely popular Flipboard (free), the new app completely reconceptualizes and designs your news feed so that it's attractively presented and fun to browse. But it does a lot more. Like Flipboard, it also gives you, in a magazine-like format, access to a wide variety of news categories, such as latest headlines, sports, tech, food, etc. According to a detailed post on Macworld, this news content is actually curated by Facebook editors from publications such as the New York Times and Huffington Post. Macworld describes the experience of Paper: "Like its namesake, Paper aims to be a tactile experience—flip through sections, tap a card to unfold stories, scroll through photos, and tilt your phone to see more details in an image." You can see a video demo after the break.
Note that initially the app will only be available in the U.S. According to Macworld, not only does the app attractively present your newsfeed and offer other news sources, it also has all the functionality of the current Facebook app, such that you will be able to exclusively use Paper for your Facebook activities.
It will be interesting to see whether this app will be able to capture users of Flipboard and other similar magazine-like apps that offer curated content. So far it looks like a winner.