Facebook launching news reader to compete with Flipboard: reports

Though it has been speculated for the past few months that Facebook is on the verge of launching a news reader designed to compete with Flipboard, a report says there is now fresh evidence that the product might well be on its way.

According to technology news site recode.net, the reader could emerge as early as the end of January 2014.

The reader called ''Paper'', would work like a mobile-focused news reader app (hence the Flipboard comparisons) although at this stage it was not clear whether it would be a standalone app or just a web experience designed specifically for mobile.

If it turned out to be the latter, then it would be a massive turnaround from Mark Zuckerbeerg's suggestion that using HTML 5 on mobile was the biggest mistake he ever made with Facebook, commentators say.

According to the source quoted by recode, Paper would collate articles from leading news providers alongside Facebook status updates and present them in a style associated with the pre-internet era.

The team building Paper started off to completely revamp Facebook newsfeed, but due to a series of delays and design refreshes the project had to be split into different parts.

According to commentators, the project did make sense, given the social network's push towards news and, if it took off, Paper could help push engagement and advertising on the social network.

But that final step might be the most difficult part of the process, as all the clever coding and good intentions in the world cannot guarantee get people would use the product, commentators say.

It also needed to be considered that the market for mobile readers is already saturated and Facebook was entering the game at a rather late stage,. the report noted.

Unlike Flipboard which is built around the appearance of magazines, the service would reportedly present stories across the internet in a "paper-like format."

According to commentators Facebook was yet to confirm the existence of Paper, but the final word on the project would soon be out.