@E N Brown I experimented with Paper.li soon after it was introduced. After a short period, I felt it was too spammy and closed my account. Although I am frequently included within my own Twitter follower papers, personally – I feel there is little control over how the content is aggregated or the selection of topics.  If the service offered curation services to make it truly a personal curation tool, I think it would be much more appealing to users (publishers), have more influence on click-thrus (traffic), and generally have a greater degree of inherent value to recipients. As it is offered now, I place little value in it.

From a viewer side, I have been featured on many paper.li accounts, and if they are not like three times a week, i will look at them. But it is very easy to get blindness in a short time. I think as an automated tool it is good for increasing your RT rates because when people see themselves on today’s headlines, they almost always RT. But I have not used it to publish my own paper, just see it a lot of my Twitter feed when my articles get featured. I wonder about the backlink values? 

@danielmckean @kilejones – I think one of the problems when trying it out is not understanding exactly how to control the content.  Once you DO have a handle on that – it is pretty slick. Being specific with what you want; to follow an exact line is possible but I don’t tow that line really straight myself at times.  Not because I can’t control what is published (which is hard to get a handle on) but because some people use hashtags incorrectly, erroneously or facetiously.

 
@jasonwiser – Hi Jason! Back-link measurement is not that hard to get a handle on.  You have a WP Blog, right? Go to “site stats” – click on the “Referrers” Summaries link and click “All time” to see where traffic is or has come from. All the numbers are there. One client I have, and for whom I run a blog, has most of their traffic from Facebook, twitter right behind that, then their website and lo’ and behold, Paper.li and Pinterest run neck-n-neck for incoming traffic. And the numbers are good for all, although FB is fairly far ahead of the other incoming traffic. So, I would report that if you know to work it, Paper.li does work and works well for improving traffic numbers. But note, you have to work it, for it work for you.

@amyhallbiz – Hi Amy – This is exactly what Paper.li does well. It is possible to follow a line on one subject; like a court case.  You can gather all the news about it into one place for perusal of your followers.

The bad side is that some folks have no imagination.  There are a GAzillion #SocialMedia newspaper editions and another GAzillion on many other BIG subjects.  The ones I like are the ones that are somewhat off-beat. If you are an orchid enthusiast, a newspaper edition on Orchids would be splendid to gather together other folks interested in this subject.

It is hard to narrow down to a needle point a subject that is not already covered a dozen time already. But I have seen it, and I do know from my own experience (and experiments) that it is a good tool. Takes awhile to figure it out, for real, though.

Thanks to you all for your comments – you are educating me on how other people view Paper.li. This IS what I need.

Eileen

@supereb Thank you for your comments and those from the others. Paper.li may require a second look.

E, I agree with Daniel about the spamness. I have tried to have one but I guess my keywords weren’t well chosen and found the papers having things I didn’t want associated with my name!! Ouch! I do like being included in other people’s papers! @danielmckean @supereb

@anitacohen-williams – I think I’ve seen that, but will take another look. Thanks for the suggestion! 
Eileen