Q&A with Facebook on Paper

Have you had a chance to play with Paper?

Here is what Jason White from the Media Partnerships team at Facebook had to say.

Jason: I work with properties like CNN, HuffingPost etc, and have been involved with Paper for a couple of months now.  The Paper product has been in development for over a year.

For those who have downloaded you’ll see similarities to FB, the Newsfeed which drives your brand, is still a big part of what Paper is.  We love Newsfeed, so we programmed that the same in Paper and is still a huge part of content discovery.

Discrete content verticals are what’s new.  Headlines, Sports, Tech News, Home Design, Photography.  The content in there is surfaced in some ways similar to your Newsfeed, but one big caveat is there is a level of human contact, editing, not only algorithm driven.  In the future, we’d like to personalize some of these verticals.  We’d like to get down to that level, but we don’t want to repeat what is coming into your Newsfeed.  Trying to find way to personalize without that duplication.

We are excited, initial feedback has been very good.  Perhaps roll it out internationally some day, but now just in our local market.  Goal is to surface good content to people who can click back to our partners.  The ecosystem is similar to FB, where we try to drive referrals back to our partners.

Question: If you have paid promotion on regular FB will it show up on Paper?

Jason: Only for things already showing up in Newsfeed.  Will not have impact on Paper sports feed.

Question: Is person in Utah getting same headlines as I am in Miami?

Jason FB: Yes they are.  We are shooting for top sports story of the day.  Now, moving forward, for long run, we’d like it be also be targeted locally.

Question: How are stats counted, as per viewing within app itself

Jason FB: Impressions in app will roll up into your Insight.  Not broken out as separate category, but if you see something in paper and you see a spike in those numbers, that is probably what has happened.  But maybe in future a separate category.

Question: What should team or brand do right now in Paper?

Jason FB:  A great dunk or something like that, as opposed to purely promotional, that will be featured in the Score area of Paper, short-term.  Newsy stories and big important stories.