paper.li - a VERY useful Twitter app

The meteoric rise in popularity of social media websites like Twitter and Facebook have spawned a plethora of apps (applications) and supporting services.

One of the more recent Twitter apps, and dare I say most interesting, is paper.li - a virtual newspaper created by collating information garnered from your Twitter followers' tweets, after which it then displays that information in an easy-to-read newspaper-like format - just as if it was News.com.au or some other such online newspaper.

I really think paper.li will become a force on the world stage as people become very "feed saturated" - in 2011, information overload will be more of a problem. I honestly can't see how anyone can keep up with following thousands of Twitter accounts, and much of the information that may be of interest or importance would no doubt go unnoticed a lot of the time.

paper.li simply goes through the accounts you follow, adds their username and avatars as bylines, and adds the content in a newspaper-like layout, with the original Tweet appearing as a mouseover event. But then it goes even further by following the links that your followers tweet, and in so doing paper.li adds images, videos, and excerpts of articles which are summarised in the online newspaper.

The "paper" also collates the feeds, or articles, into relevant categories, such as Headlines, Stories, Technology, Politics, Business, Health, and more. It uses hash tags (#) to created themed pages as well.

If you are very busy through the day, but you still want to catch up on what the people (or businesses) you follow have been up to, it is so much easier and more efficient to look at it in this format. And, unlike Twitter, you can see much more information without clicking on a link because as mentioned previously, paper.li summarises each story, displays each video, and thumbnails each image.

SmallRivers, a privately held start up operating out of Switzerland, is responsible for this latest piece of online, Twitter-related wizardry. The company was co-founded by Edouard Lambelet (@edouardlambelet) and Iskander Pols (@ipols), and the company website states:

"The company is focused on facilitating the discovery of relevant content and other people of interest on the web"

I would say, looking at paper.li and its features to date, it seems they are VERY focussed and provide an innovative and helpful application.

Edouard Lambelet, President of SmallRivers said:

"Paper.li has generated extraordinary traction since its launch, and we are thrilled to welcome these world-class venture capital firms as investors. Our new partners will be instrumental in helping us to enhance our team, build strong partnerships with major service and content providers, establish operations in the US and Asia, and accelerate growth on all continents."

They've recently added a feature where a publisher, or editor, can add their own unique content to the automatically generated newspaper, and planned for the future are things like being able to change the look and feel of your paper.li newspaper, personal or company branding, and more control over what appears in your own newspaper.

I think paper.li has a long and exciting future ahead, and it seems I'm not the only one who thinks that way. SmallRivers have managed to secure ongoing finance valued in the millions through venture capital firms Highland Capital Partners, SoftBank Capital and Endeavour Vision.

I'm really looking forward to following this company and their Twitter app, and where they take it from here.

Get your own paper.li by visiting the website, www.paper.li - creating an account takes less than a few minutes, and your paper will automatically be tweeted once or twice per day, depending on your settings. Give it a try - its very cool, and while you're there, check out the JustWeb Daily online newspaper.

  

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