The first quarter of every year is an interesting time for the marketing spectrum in the USA, with new launches, big resolutions, bigger ambitions and of course the Super Bowl with its much-awaited advertisements.

In the spirit of the season, Facebook launched Facebook Paper on January 30, a new attempt at a standalone news-sourcing mobile application that is initially available only on Apple’s ubiquitous iOS, and that too for the iPhone alone (an iPad optimised version is said to be on the anvil). The new application was well received by Apple users and is positioned as ‘Paper – Stories from Facebook’. While the application at first glance looks like a dressed up RSS Feed with a super-slick grid and an impressive layout to aid readability on small mobile screens, Facebook says that Paper accomplishes much more.

Paper is the first product by Facebook Creative Labs, a new sub-entity within Facebook that has a mandate to augment the overall interaction of Facebook with users. Facebook claims that Paper stands out from other similar products (Flipboard being the most common comparison) because of the way content is sourced on Paper. Unlike other RSS and news aggregator apps, Paper is more reliant on your personal preferences, choice of friends as well as your interaction with Facebook. All this is then pre-packaged into your newsfeed keeping you up-to-date with news you want.

Facebook Creative Labs for its part is heavily extolling the greater personalisation angle of Paper, thereby claiming that it will be a more relevant news aggregator as well as curation source, enabling users to not just consume but create and share news stories. Much of this is still work in progress, many detractors claim that so far, apart from its impressive design, Facebook Paper is more restrictive compared to Flipboard which gives more choice of news source selection, is multiplatform, embedded into more social networks like Twitter, Tumblr, etc. and is more content focused.

However, Facebook claims that these differences are by design and not by default and the benefits of these will become more apparent over time. Although Paper has been well received, the praise seems more focused on the freshness of the design and readability as opposed to the features of the app itself. Furthermore, most of the positive comparisons drawn are from Facebook’s older versions as opposed to the competition. This raised the question of whether Facebook Paper can move beyond the core audience of Facebook fans and broaden its appeal.

Although Facebook celebrated 10 years in business last month, outlasting many rivals like Orkut and Bebo, etc., news of its impending demise is never far from headlines. In January, researchers from PrincetonUniversity predicted that Facebook will lose 90% of its user base by 2017 as people tend to latch onto the idea of a social network like a disease and then are cured of it over time. The inference of being compared to a curable version of the bubonic plague must surely be giving some people sleepless nights at Facebook HQ.

Evolution of strategy seems therefore the only way forward and that is where Facebook Creative Labs comes in, a modular segment creator that does not change the flagship app or website experience of Facebook, but rather modularly augments value, engagement and usage with users. Also with the launch of Paper, Facebook hopes to break the mould of being just a social network (and hence being at risk of a cure) to becoming a hub of content curation, thereby creating more user generated content, and through it, more long term loyalty. While the jury may be out on how Paper will fare, most tech-news outfits such as Mashable, TechCrunch, The Verge and Wired seem to approve of the direction Facebook is taking.

As Paper increases its offerings and hopefully becomes available on multi ecosystems such as Android and Windows Mobile, its strategic anchors and capabilities will become more crystallised.

With over 50% of Facebook’s revenue now coming from mobile advertising platforms, having a mobile specific application does make good business sense. It will be interesting to see where Facebook takes things from here on.

Tariq Ziad Khan is a US-based marketer and a former member of Aurora’s editorial team. tzk999@yahoo.com