Facebook introduces newspaper-style “Paper” app, announces solid mobile ad revenue growth

Social media giant Facebook has released a new newspaper-style app called Paper as it reported solid growth in its mobile ad revenues.

The Paper app, the first product out of Facebook’s Creative Labs, allows users to create posts – called “stories” in the app – that contain text and pictures.

The stories, in turn, are gathered into themed sections users can scroll through, with sections containing stories from both friends and other users.

By default, the first section contains a user’s Facebook news feed and users can add additional sections dedicated to a particular theme. For example, a user might choose to add a section dedicated to fashion, entertainment or food.

“Paper makes storytelling more beautiful with an immersive design and fullscreen, distraction-free layouts,” Facebook states.

“You can customize Paper with a choice of more than a dozen other sections about various themes and topics—from photography and sports to food, science and design.

“Each section includes a rich mix of content from emerging voices and well-known publications.”

The social media giant announced the new app as it revealed strong results for both the fourth quarter and full year of 2013.

The company’s revenues for 2013 grew to $US7.8 billion, up from $5.089 billion for 2012, while fourth quarter revenues grew to $US2.85 billion, up from $US1.5 billion a year earlier.

Facebook’s full-year net income for 2013 was $US1.5 billion, up significantly from just $US53 million, while December quarter net revenue was up to $US523 million, a strong increase from $US64 million for the same quarter a year earlier.

The results also included a 22% year-on-year increase in daily active users (DAUs), to an average of 757 million users per day in December 2013.

Even more impressive was its increase in DAUs on mobile devices, which increased 49% year-on-year to 556 million users per day on average in December 2013.

Along with the increase in user engagement, the social media giant reported strong growth in mobile advertising.

Its total revenue from advertising during the fourth quarter was $US2.34 billion, a 76% increase from the same quarter last year.

Mobile advertising accounted for 53% of Facebook’s advertising revenue during the fourth quarter of 2013, up from just 23% for the same quarter last year.