On average, social media managers are managing five to ten Facebook pages — I am at 11 right now. A huge chunk of our time is spent curating content and keeping track of all those notifications. Then, of course, you want to keep track of your own personal interactions. I have Facebook Pages Manager, the Facebook app, Facebook Messenger, and I also have a couple of content curation apps including paper.li and feed.ly. I also use BuzzSpice and PostPlanner. One app wasn’t doing it ALL for me and all of these apps don’t really hit the spot. Along came Paper by Facebook, now even better since the March 5th upgrade. This app filters content based on topic but also allows you to manage your profile just as well as the Facebook app, if not better.

Why I love Paper…

Facebook Paper cuts through the clutter: Some days you open your Facebook app and you scroll more than you read, you glance more than you stop to stare and share. This app organizes content by a set of predefined filters like “Tech” and “Family Matters” and allows you to cut past what the messy newsfeed algorithm that decides you see so you can read what you like. The app pulls trafficked content from great sources. But if you just want to look at your newsfeed, you can do that too…

May work better than the Facebook app: It includes the basics: messaging, notifications, friend requests, comments, and likes. You can browse all your groups and liked pages and even create content. It works better than the Facebook app for those moments when you are simply want to browse, comment, and check in. More recently, as the app’s popularity has dropped on app stores, Facebook added something even more innovative, the ability to share articles by  email, Facebook message, and even text message! The appeal goes beyond  usability though, it helps that it’s beautiful.

It’s beautiful and intuitive: Built with a new technology called Origami, this is the first app ever created from a designer’s point of view. It flows and uses maximum screen space without the use of a lot of nav bars, icons and in-the-way drop-down menus. The top images transform from screen to screen giving you intuitive options depending on what type of landing page you are on (category, someone’s personal page, business page, fan page etc…). The feel of it reminds me of the first time I used a Mac product after years of PC stress. When you first log in, it has an interactive tutorial unlike anything I have ever seen before but I wouldn’t have had much need for it since it behaves how the user expects it to.

Try to ignore the serendipitous alignment on image above “If you’re too drunk to speak, then you… Reshare Post”. It wasn’t intended as a joke, and no, Facebook Paper doesn’t finish your sentences. I’m still in love though.

Setbacks: All apps have a few setbacks and all love affairs have adjustment periods. There isn’t much I would change but there one thing I would. It would be nice to have more filters, defined by a wider variety of topics like “nutrition,” “underground fashion” or more specific like “hats.” The categories in there don’t seem to cover all the basis and seem to have been selected quite randomly. However, knowing Facebook’s love of algorithms and spying on what we see, it’s safe to say they probably selected them based on what users engage with the most while on the site tamiflu for kids. Another more minor issue is that the way it looks completely affects the way businesses set up their pages. For example, if you had done something clever with your cover it gets lost in this app.

All in all I think Paper will take over my regular Facebook app soon. My natural instinct is still to click on that big F icon but the more I play with paper the more I can see it becoming THE app I go to when checking my personal pages or looking for content for my client and business pages while on the go.

Have you downloaded Paper yet? What do you think of it?

— MaVi