Facebook Paper to make US debut on 3 February

Facebook has confirmed its Flipboard competitor Paper will make its debut on iOS devices on 3 February in the US.

The app provides a reworked Facebook interface that intersperses friends' status updates with articles from a range of publications chosen by users.

The social networking giant announced the app in a blog post earlier today, where it billed Paper as a "new app that helps you explore and share stories from friends and the world around you".

The blog post continued: "Paper is made of stories and themed sections, so you can follow your favourite interests. The first section is your Facebook News Feed, where you'll enjoy inspiring new designs for photos, videos and longer written posts.

"You can customise 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."

The app is the first offering to come out of Facebook Creative Labs, the social networking giant's shadowy research and development arm that is tasked with making apps that make it easier for people to "connect and share" content on the site.

At present, there is no UK release date for the app. Furthermore, IT Pro's request for information from Facebook about the possibility of the app being made available to Android and Windows Phone users was unanswered at the time of publication.

The forthcoming release of Paper marks another attempt by Facebook to re-package its services for mobile devices, and provide them with a better user experience.

This has been a focus for the company for some time now, and has already seen the firm roll out Facebook Home an overlay for the Android operating system which was designed to make the site faster and easier for mobile users to access.