Facebook gives up on Paper
The words "Facebook Paper" might only be vaguely familiar to you. This is because Facebook's iPhone-only news app, launched in 2014, never got much traction.
Facebook never shared any usage numbers for the app, but the signs that Paper's shelf life is coming to an end were plenty. Facebook shut down Creative Labs, Facebook's internal team that brought the app to life, in Dec. 2015, and Paper wasn't updated at all this year.
Now, in a message to users, Facebook announced it would completely shut down Paper on July 29.
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"Today we're announcing that we are ending support for the app and users will no longer be able to log into the app after July 29," the message reads.
The app is already removed from Apple's App Store, and Facebook's official Paper page is gone.
Mike Matas, Facebook's product design lead for Paper, tweeted that more than a hundred thousand people still use Paper -- a drop in an ocean compared to Facebook's 1.6+ billion users.
Facebook points out that certain aspects of Paper will live on in the main Facebook app.
“For example, the same team that built Paper also built Instant Articles—a fast and interactive experience for reading articles in News Feed—using many of the same tools, design elements, and fundamental ideas as Paper,” the company said in its message to users.
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Topics Facebook
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
