Report Indicates Facebook is Working on Flipboard Like Service

By: Ali Raza  |   June 26th, 2013   |   Business, News, Social Media

According to The Wall Street Journal, popular social networking site Facebook is now looking to launch a service similar to RSS Flipboard that will push the social medium into the newspaper category from where users will be able to access news with their mobile devices. WSJ’s sources have claimed that Facebook has been working on the service for more than a year now. If reports prove true then it would not be the first time that Facebook has tried something new apart from adding new features for users. Mark Zuckerberg and company have been testing various things since Facebook has become a home for more than 1 billion users, so they could take it to another level by boosting revenue. Due to this very reason, Reader is directly under the watch of Zuckerberg.

 

It is said that Reader is quite like the Flipboard service and rumour has it that it will feature content from both publishers and Facebook users in a format that is especially customised for mobile devices. Although, at this point in time one cannot predict the exact launch date of the service, but it surely sounds like a business idea that is expected to lure mobile device users, who love to read news and other content. With the introduction of ads this could perhaps be a part of a mobile monetization plan from Zuckerberg and company.

Talking about the alleged reading service, Greylock Partners’ venture capitalist, Josh Elman, who had also worked on products for both Twitter and Facebook, said that  “The opportunity to own the place where people go for long-form reading is a very large opportunity, especially for advertising.”

 

Nate Elliot, an analyst from Forrestor said that, “There are a lot of things people didn’t do on Facebook several years ago that they now do. But I imagine it’s going to be very hard to retrain consumers to see Facebook as a go-to hub for news.”

 

It was reported that the lead designer of the project is Michael Matas, who was previously attached with Nest Labs and Apple. Under his supervision the design team is facing numerous challenges and one of these tough tasks is to keep users busy on Facebook.

 

So it will be interesting to see how Zuckerberg and his team will attract more users with the new Reader service, as it would not be easy for them to do so because the competition is getting tough with the passage of time, as AOL has recently launched a Reader service in beta version.

 

Source: iPhoneinCanada