Since Paper.li quietly launched in May this year, it’s been building momentum. At first it seemed like a very simple Twitter app which just turned the feed from the people you follow into a rather neat newspaper-style site where you could peruse what was being shared. But coupled with an automatic virality, in that it would make your account tweet the user names name of the people featured in your ‘Paper’, the application has been taking off. Subsequently I have been hearing rumours that it’s traffic was exploding, thus attracting a lot interest from potential investors, although the company denies it is raising financing right now.
Today those rumours surface to some extent in the form of news, exlusive to us, that well known investor Guy Kawasaki has joined its advisory board.
Similar to Twittertim.es, part of Paper.li’s appeal is that it presents the links shared in your feed in a highly digestible form, thus giving it quite a lot of mainstream appeal. It’s also been optimized for use on the iPad.
I caught up with CEO and founder Edouard Lambelet at the Monaco Media Forum for the interview below:
Switzerland-based SmallRivers, the company behind the app is funded by Kima Ventures and German-based fund Econa and has launched in French and German and now Spanish.
The latest stats the company has release reveal that there are currently some 99.7K registered users on the site publishing some 1,000 new newspapers daily. The US currently accounts for 40% of users, 14% UK, 6% Canada, however, non-English speaking users also make-up roughly 40% traffic with French and German users leading the way. Currently, some 207 countries are represented in the company’s user base.
TechCrunch France spoke to the team back in July, when the company indicated an intention to go after the Japanese market.