Quietly worked on for more than a year
and codenamed Reader, the unannounced product is being developed for
smartphone and tablet use, and will display news feeds as an attractive
magazine or interactive newspaper similar to Flipboard, the news
aggregator with 50 million users worldwide.
Reported
by the Wall Street Journal, the news comes just days before Google is
set to close down its hugely popular Reader, a browser-based RSS reader,
on 1 July; the move has already sparked development from Digg, AOL,
Feedly and others to create a worthy replacement and scoop up users
unable to use the Google service.
Citing "people with
knowledge of the project," the WSJ reports that Facebook's Reader
product will look more like Flipboard and its magazine-style,
image-heavy layout than Google's own Reader, which is a simple feed of
headlines and text.
Although not yet the go-to place
for online news, Facebook is no stranger to the industry, having gifted
huge success to newspapers such as the Guardian and Independent, whose
Facebook applications have helped to boost visitor numbers, especially
among the younger demographic who would previously have visited
traditional news websites less often.
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