Facebook started out as an online directory of friends, a sort of digital yearbook. As the company added more features, it gave users more opportunities to tell stories about themselves and communicate with each other, bringing photo albums, status updates, and Wall Posts into the mix. With the debut of its Newsfeed, the company started treating these updates like items on a news ticker.
For years, Facebook has sworn by the power of algorithms to serve users a personalized mix of status updates, stories and photos. It’s what makes up the heart of the company’s premier product, the News Feed. Soon, Facebook will add another approach to delivering the news: Via a new app, humans working for Facebook will start telling you which news stories you should be reading. Over the past few months, Facebook has sought to hire contract editors to staff up Paper, the company’s unreleased, Flipboard-like news aggregation mobile app, according to two people familiar with the matter.
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