Facebook tries to kill Flipboard with social news app (video)

Facebook has announced a new news-reading app called Paper for iPhone, which wants to replace Flipboard and be a user's portal to friends and news, The  Guardian reported.

The slick, gesture-driven app will launch in the US on 3 February and promises to overhaul how users view and interact with status updates, photos and videos from friends, as well as news content pulled from “the world’s best sources”.

With Paper, Facebook is directly challenging Flipboard, the news and social aggregator that presents stories in a magazine-style layout that flips between stories with swiping gestures.

Flipboard also pulls content from news sources and entertainment sites, as well as Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. Aiming for 150 million users by the end of 2014, Flipboard had about 85 million users in September 2013 with 6 million users added within a month of the launch of version 2.0 of the application. The company was valued at $800m (£485m) by a $50m funding round in September.