How I would improve paper.li

I may be in the minority, but I like free service offered by paper.li.

For those of who aren’t familiar with the service, paper.li organizes my links shared on Twitter and Facebook into newspaper-style format.  I can simply aggregate the tweets of those I follow, aggregate the tweets on a specific hashtag or aggregate the tweets from one of my lists. I can also set the frequency for “newspaper publication” at daily, weekly or monthly.

Paper.li pulls information from the tweets I send, although most of the content comes from the people on Twitter in order to round out the “news” for the day.  Currently, there are no controls to fine-tune or otherwise tailor the content. I don’t get to choose whose content goes into the paper, nor do I get to filter it in anyway aside from the hashtag or list options I mentioned earlier.

The service uses an algorithm to identify and highlight important or newsworthy content; however, I’m clueless as to how it chooses content and the folks at paper.li are mum on the topic. It’s pretty uncanny in its ability to identify the “news” I would find of interest, so I suspect the algorithm includes some combination of the content in the tweets I share and the content I personally tweet, along with the topic generally tweeted by those I follow.

I’ve created several “papers” with paper.li and I visit each of my papers every morning and scan the tweets from the last 24-hours, much like I would scan the articles in my morning newspaper. Often I find information of interest that I might have missed the day before, so I find it useful to keep on top the news of interest to me. There are also a couple of my papers that I share via a daily tweet to my list.

The promotions of my daily papers are what raise the shackles of some on Twitter.  Apparently, they don’t see the value in my sharing of “my news” and rarely, if ever, look at my paper.  I suppose ignoring a paper built on my interests is a valid argument for most, especially since they can create their own paper at paper.li that’s tailored to their interests.  Those who follow me on Twitter likely have similar interests to me, so it’s a nice way for me to share with them the content they may also have missed—which may be different from their paper considering they’re likely to follow somewhat different people than I follow.

I must confess that I only occasionally read the newspapers of others. The papers that I do read are those that have a very narrow focus. Such papers are built from lists that someone has taken the time and made the effort compile and are made up of consistently interesting people who regularly share or talk about information that’s relevant to me. If you’ve ever tried to build a Twitter list like this you’ll understand why it’s a lot less trouble to read someone else’s paper if your interests are similar.

I’ve been fine-tuning the lists I use for my promoted papers, but the absence of a little more granularity of content control makes my papers less useful than they could be for my followers.  I’m thankful for the 100 or so new followers I’ve gained since promoting my papers, though. Most have similar interests and many have engaged me in great conversations, both online and offline.

Still, there are a few small things that paper.li could do to give me a little more control and better target my content, which would make my papers more useful to me and possibly for others. For example, paper.li might offer features to:

• Filter content by keywords and/or hashtags. I’ve found the best way to drive relevant content is by using a list. But, not everything a person on a list tweets is relevant to the topic of the paper. I don’t believe the algorithm considers the paper name, so my “Trademark Licensing” paper might also include stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with trademark licensing.  If I could filter content so that tweets were excluded if they didn’t have specific key words and/or hashtags, the paper would be more relevant and focused by topic.

• Suspend publication if there’s no relevant information in the stream based on filters. On weekends, for example, one of my papers contains little, if any information relevant to the topic of the paper—it’s driven by a list not a hashtag.  On one recent weekend day the only content within this paper was one my tweets, which included a sole picture of  the Charlie Brown Christmas tree I have in my office.

• Provide Keyword filtering would be better than hashtags. As much value as hashtags can have in selecting content, there are no hashtag standards.  People don’t always use the same hashtags for content that could be relevant to the paper.  Paper.li might also allow me to change the name of a hashtag-driven paper would be a bonus. A paper called, “#trademarklicensing Daily” isn’t going gain much of following, especially if it misses relevant information that is tagged with #trademark or #licensing, but not #trademarklicensing.

• Add a disclaimer or  establish a standard disclaimer for everyone. There are still a number of people who don’t understand the product and are surprised to be mentioned from time to time. They think it’s something I’m consciously doing and it takes a bit of explaining as to how paper.li works—including how to stop the mentions. Until I can gain better control of the content, I’d like to add a disclaimer at the top of the paper explaining that I have little control over the paper’s content. Alternatively, paper.li could add this disclaimer for every paper for every user.

Yes, I like paper.li. Or at least I like what it has the potential to become with just a few minor additions.

What about you? What would make paper.li a good fit for you?