Yesterday, Facebook released a new app that changes the presentation of the immensely popular social network into an attractive, streamlined format, and offers more of a focus on news and popular content.  The normal Facebook abilities like messages and friends are all still there, but pushed from the forefront a bit.  This new app, Paper, organizes the content from both users and brands into a theme with organized browsing sections.  

This is Facebook’s fourth attempt at a stand-alone app. Facebook’s Messenger app was a huge success, although the Home app was a disaster and the Poke app was basically ignored.  

The main focus of Paper are “stories”, which are basically large pictures, auto-play videos, and text in a full-screen format.  The default page in the app is the user’s Facebook news feed, but it is designed so users can easily pull up new pages.  “Each section includes a rich mix of content from emerging voices and well-known publications,” Facebook says.  

Although there is a spot for the familiar news feed on the app, the focal point is the more mainstream content.  If the News Feed is ignored, which is easily done, it becomes Facebook without Facebook.  It remains to be seen whether or not this app will gain traction, and if it does, what kind of new platform facebook will morph into.