News Service Competition
Facebook Paper, a mobile news platform released in early Feb., is reportedly struggling in the market, in marked contrast to rosy growth expectations. To make up for its poor performance, Facebook started to reorganize the app to target the global market, as shown by its recent effort to add a new function that supports multiple language input.
According to industry sources on March 9, the social networking giant is trying to improve the function of Paper by releasing an updated version. Paper 1.0.2 includes a feature where users can write in other languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Hence, many in the industry think that the app gained a foothold as a global news platform.
When the mobile news platform was introduced, it was hailed as a new app with the potential to replace the existing Facebook app, since the mobile app allows users to see various articles of news organizations that forged a partnership with Facebook without accessing individual websites. In particular, once registering accounts, people can use the Facebook Timeline, and at the same time consume and share news in the form of a section, without using Facebook.
At first, the mobile app was well received by overseas news outlets in as much as it was once called “the best application,” but the market has been showing a cold response to the mobile platform over time. Last month, the app was even pushed out of the top 100 in Apple’s App Store.
The influence of the mobile news platform is minimal at the moment, since it is iPhone-exclusive and provided only in the US. So far, Facebook has not made any arrangement to launch the app’s Android or Korean version. However, experts are saying that the mobile platform is likely to be released in the Korean app market, since additional language support has been made possible.
The introduction of Paper’s Korean version is expected to have a huge influence on the local market, given a lack of mobile news platforms. Currently, mobile messenger service provider Kakao is considering the launch of a news service, whereas the country’s top portal operator Naver is reorganizing its news aggregation service called “Newsstand.”
An industry source observed, “If Facebook rolls out a Korean version of Paper, people using news services of portal sites such as Naver and Daum are more likely to switch to Facebook Paper.” The source added, “Facebook’s move like this would be a threat to local companies, since there are no definitive mobile news platforms in the country.”