Facebook rolled out an update to its popular news reading app, Paper, for iOS devices that includes birthday and event notifications, photo comments, new article covers and more.
Facebook, the world's largest social networking site, rolled out its most significant update to the personalized news reading app Paper for iOS devices. The update, which brings the app version to 1.1, adds new features that allow users to add birthdays, events and also receive notifications from within the app. Facebook says these features have been brought by user's demand and suggestions.
Facebook added a dedicated notifications globe icon, like on the Facebook app, to show dates for upcoming friends' birthdays and events and users can scroll past to see what's coming next. The social network also added photo comments for its Paper iOS app, which lets users reply to comments with more than just words. Tap the camera icon in the comments field to snap a photo and add it in the comment.
Facebook also highlighted the popularity of the app among avid users and how it serves a wide range of users' requests. "People using Paper explore an average of 80 stories each day in Paper across 5 to 6 sections," the Facebook Paper team wrote in an official blog post, Friday. "Facebook is the most popular section, and Headlines, Tech, Ideas, LOL and Pop Life are the next most read. We're also seeing avid use of some of our more tailored sections, like Pride. If you want to add more sections or change their order, swipe down to get to the main menu and tap Edit Sections."
Facebook Paper's support for groups has been improved somewhat with the count of unread posts from different groups on the app. But accessing a particular group is still not easy, users must navigate to the Main Menu > More Options and then select the appropriate group.
Finally, Facebook tweaked the article covers for various publications like Bloomberg News, Mashable, FT, kottke, Fox News, Popular Science, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and Hacker News. The social networking site commissioned designer Sharon Hwang for the task who crafted more than 50 article covers for Paper. The update also brings speed, reliability and accessibility and adds new story arrows to get the latest news in full screen view.
The update is already available for Paper app users and new users can download the updated Paper app from the App Store.
