Facebook has sent out invites for a press event on June 20. It seems that the social media company is up to something big and it plans to reveal it over coffee but what's brewing could be more than just a cup of joe - it could be a Facebook Reader.
The details about the event are very limited as of reporting but speculations abound that Facebook might take advantage of the situation as Google Reader is about to be shut down. With the addition of hashtags to Facebook, the social media platform will be a good channel for discovering the latest happenings and the hottest news.
"A small team has been working on a big idea. Join us for coffee and learn about a new product," the invite stated as reported first by ABC News. Joanna Stern of ABC News said her article that Facebook sent out the invites not through email nor through Facebook messages but in a white envelope sent via snail mail.
The invite also serves as a good hint of the mysterious product Facebook plans to unveil. The paper has a stain of the bottom of a coffee mug and that usually happens to newspapers when reading it while enjoying a good cup of coffee.
The recent announcement of Facebook about the clickable hashtags may also hold some clues.
"To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics. As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook," the Facebook announcement stated. "When you click on a hashtag in Facebook, you'll see a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic."
The hashtags can just be the first step and a Facebook Reader could aggregate news items into a consumable feed for users.
At the moment, Facebook is keeping its loips sealed about the new product.
TechCrunch, like us has smelled Facebook RSS Reader brewing and Tom Waddington claims to have spotted some codes on the Graph API code of Facebook.
"This code could be part of the new product, but it also may be unrelated, having to do with a user's own posts being an RSS feed, rather than a user reading feeds produced by others," the report said.
If it is indeed a Facebook Reader, then Feedly, the frontrunner replacement for Google Reader at the moment, might not be too pleased.
