Paper.li Lets You Read Twitter In Daily Newspaper Form, Raises More Funding

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Jun 30, 2010

Exclusive – SmallRivers, a fledging Internet startup based out of Switzerland that has developed a Web app called Paper.li that basically lets you turn Twitter streams, tags and lists into daily online newspapers, has landed more cash after inking a $1 million seed funding deal back in 2008.

Investing in this new round are a group of unnamed ‘reputed Web 2.0 business angels’ along with German investment and media group Econa and Kima Ventures, the early-stage investment firm started by French entrepreneurs Xavier Niel and Jeremie Berrebi.

Paper.li, launched in alpha mode last April, organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy-to-skim page that makes it look like an online newspaper’s homepage. Virtual, personalized newspapers can be created for any Twitter user (TechCrunch), list (Robert Scoble’s ‘most influential in tech’ list) or tag (#oilspill).

SmallRivers is now gearing up to launch Paper.li in beta, and says it has already attracted a lot of attention from established social and traditional media companies for partnerships. The startup is currently working on adding more functionalities to the service and adding support for a bunch more languages. The new beta version should go live in the next few weeks.

One partnership the small company is likely to strike is one with French national newspaper Le Monde – Kima Ventures partner Xavier Niel just snubbed France’s president Sarkozy in a bid to take over the paper along with Yves Saint Laurent Group partner Pierre Berg and banker Matthieu Pigasse. Niel is a self-made billionaire thanks to his 64 percent share of Iliad, the Internet broadband company he founded after an initial career running sex-chat services.

On a sidenote: Niel is also one of the many angel investors behind Jack Dorsey’s Square.

Colorful bunch of investors, but time will tell if their backing helps turn Paper.li into a real business rather than a cute gimmicky service.

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Jonathan

You've gotta be kidding me. I've built a Twitter service that is more popular than Paper.li in 1/10th the time at a cost of one server. The venture capitalists putting millions into these services are out of their minds. Comical stuff.
http://twitter.com/SocialMedia411 @SocialMedia411

What's the URL of your site/service?
http://intensedebate.com/profiles/om2chris om2chris

Why does their log look like captcha?
http://www.labnium.org Digital Imagination

wow…thats cool…twitter now is exploring its turn and people too are supporting them….good to see this….
http://www.making-your-own-website.com Create Your First Website

Yeah what’s your website. Maybe we will use it?

Nabeel
John

What’s the URL of this site?
http://bit.ly/shyam Shyam Somanadh

First up, a disclaimer: We have been testing a similar service for a bit now, so you can consider what I have to say as coming from a direct competitor.

There is very little in what Paper.li (or what we have tried), that can’t be replicated easily. It is child’s play to pick up links from Twitter streams and present it to users in different ways. There is little value in being able to do this.

Paper.li has been in region-limited sign ups for a while with a good reason. It is insanely difficult to scale this side of the business. Why? Let me explain.

Google works by reducing the preference of the masses to the specific context. Example: 500 other people who seem to read the same feeds as you do, read another 150 other sources that you don’t read at the moment.

Which is VERY different from actually ascertaining the data set of each of your users. What makes it even worse is that even if the users don’t login on a daily basis, you still need to expend these computing cycles.

To attack the problem at hand of actual personal context, you need investment that runs into multiples of millions than just a million. But it is good to see them making progress and going forward with their product.

Best of luck to them :)
http://twitter.com/s_manickam Manickam

There is no doubt in that. Day-by-day Twitter is bring the more popular social media website.
http://www.muzikdinleyin.net muzik dinle

tum muzikler bu adresde guncellenen dev arsiv burada.
http://www.pledgingforchange.com Karen Pledging for Change

I’m not entirely clear on the value of this paper either. I think it’s easier to check into your twitter lists that you have created in your twitter profile if you want to get quick access to your favorites and what they are tweeting about?

Maybe I’m missing something tho?