With Facebook turning 10 years old today, two things immediately come to mind: my age (twice that of Facebook) and how tiring it is to scroll through my home page.  Give it a little more time and a little more analysis though, and you suddenly realize the potential any small change on Facebook can bring- like with applying a news-based app for it called Paper.

Paper, an iPhone app released just yesterday, promises to supplement computer searching with human, editorial judgment in presenting news beyond what your friend had for lunch or what your aunt thinks is the cutest video of all time. Mini-magazines and articles are sprinkled through the news feed. It also provides an option to organize according to interests, appeal to the eye, and minimize distractions, according to its preview description:

Explore and share stories from friends and the world in immersive designs and fullscreen, distraction-free layouts. Paper includes your Facebook News Feed and sections about your favorite topics.

Early users described “the story-reading experience [as] rich and beautiful,” and done rather well for an “initial release.”  Some technology sites also gave it good reviews.  While I cannot comment on its actual impact since I a) don’t have an iPhone and b) it’s very early to tell, let’s look at the potential for a moment.

There are 1.2 billion people registered on Facebook and plenty of people without one know someone who spends time on it. For instance, while my father doesn’t see what’s so appealing about the endless stream of updates from people he half knows and content from pages he doesn’t, he sees mom and I engulfed in it.

Now imagine that 31% of them rely on it to keep up on current events, regardless of gender.  That’s nearly comparable to the 310 million population of the United States. If the app catches on for its smooth design and ability to minimize distractions from those friends that post 15 times a day (many people wouldn’t mind that), it’s still promising.  Over 100 million people use Facebook from a mobile device.  If just 1 of 100 uses the application over the default Facebook mobile app, that’s still 1 million people- the size of some small countries.

My journalism major-self is both skeptical and ecstatic. One one hand, even if news isn’t your first reason for browsing, there’s still a fair chance it can pass through the newsfeed when people share something of concrete value.  On the other hand, the New York Times acknowledged that it may appeal more to some left-leaning updates at first (LGBT, environmentalism) and that Zuckerberg wanted “the best personalized newspaper in the world.” It could turn into confirmation bias and send some people on the far-right screaming into the night (ha, that rhymed).

Above all of this though, is the mention of it being a ‘newspaper‘ and better quality articles that will hopefully provide better insight.  As said, actual newspaper editors are getting into a fresh new project.  Whether or not this succeeds is purely speculative right now. But even if it provides only a little change, a little more actionable information rarely hurts.