Be The Publisher Of Your Own Online 'Newspaper'

I already write this blog, so I never entertained the idea that I might need to take on the added responsibility of publishing my own newspaper with a branded masthead. But paper.li reduces journalism to the act of editorial curation, a thought that no doubt would give my mother, a retired journalism professor, heartburn. You can see what I mean by clicking here to read  The Gearheadgal Daily. The site merchandises that "paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag." 

A new category of mobile and web applications is being built off the premise that consumers need a better user experience to harness and manage the flood of real time information rushing at them from Twitter or Facebook (Look at Flipboard, and Frequency.com, for example.)

paper.li believes that with a newspaper-style columnar layout and several more characters than 140 it will be more enjoyable to scan for relevant content. Not surprisingly, you can subscribe to other "daily newspapers". But after the creating the second one from a Twitter list, I felt as overwhelmed by the influx of information as I had before. 

I do appreciate how paper.li creates media sections for photos and videos. They are easier to scan parsed from the Tweets, and lay out nicely on the page. The editable newspaper headline is also great, if you want to mail the link as a marketing tool, for your brand which may be different than the Twitter ID.

The product is in alpha.