Facebook may be planning to provide a newspaper-like service for smartphones and tablets. The secret project is being closely overlooked by company CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The Wall Street Journal claimed that the social networking giant has been secretly working on this project codenamed 'Reader' for over a year now. This Flipboard-like Reader will display content from Facebook users and publishers as per user preferences.
Reader was supposed to be launched last week but Facebook came out with Video for Instagram instead. The company spokesperson declined from commenting, which suggests that Reader is still getting fixed for last minute glitches. WSJ was unable to get an official launch date.
The report hinted that Facebook's mobile endeavour is mighty important for Zuckerberg and will play a critical role to shoot up stock prices for Facebook that remain at 35 percent below its initial offering currently.
This Reader app will supposedly curate stories from multiple sources and allow the user to flip through them. The articles will specifically be related to the 'knowledge' of the user.
The objective of this unofficial service is to make Facebook a one-stop spot for everyone. This project is to gain attention for longer periods of time from users (for ads) and increase traffic on the website.
This does not come as a surprise as Facebook has been actively accumulating the best of all worlds online, be it hashtag from Twitter or this project from Flipboard.
Flipboard, an app for both Android and iPhones, enables the user to 'flip' through latest news and share it afterwards on social networks. Flipboard readers can create their own magazines. The service already has 50 million readers till now.
