Site of the Month: Paper.li

I first came across Paper.li several months ago but didn’t try it out for myself until a few days ago, but i’m glad I finally did. Paper.li is a novel way of creating a customized online newspaper from links shared by your Twitter followers (or Facebook stream).  You can create a “newspaper” with a broad focus or very topical by filtering links shared by 1) all your followers, 2) one of your twitter lists or 3) by a specific interest  or #hashtag.

I like Paper.li for a few different reasons:

– Noise filter. Finding interesting links on Twitter can be inefficient and often times gets drowned by random conversations and tweets that are happening between users.  Paper.li helps solve this problem by filtering this noise and only showing links shared by users from a Twitter list or a specific topic of interest. No random chatter or irrelevant conversations – thumbs up!

– Better experience. Similar to Flipboard, the presentation of content is what defines Paper.li and they’ve nailed it. The newspaper experience is muuuuch more compelling/engaging/interesting than sifting through any stream (and hats off for making a scrumptiously delicious UI). The layout includes titles & excerpts for each news piece along with recently shared photos and videos mixed in.

– Discovery. Paper.li also has some discovery value as it lets you easily browse and find interesting news stories and other users relevant to your interests from papers generated by others. Seems like there could be some untapped potential here…

I created The Disruptive Daily in about 2 minutes from one of my lists.

Overall, I’m impressed with what the guys at Paper.li have created. I’ll be even more impressed if they find a profitable business model…