Flipboard Offers a Personal Magazine on Apple’s iPad
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010If you feel overwhelmed by every new story or piece of news from friends in your online social networks, there’s a new iPad “personal social magazine” to organize them. On Wednesday, a new publication called Flipboard announced a new kind of magazine that “brings to life the stories, photos, news and updates being shared across Twitter and Facebook.”
The company, founded by former Tellme CEO Mike McCue and former senior iPhone engineer Evan Doll, creates a magazine format out of a given user’s social content, which it complements with other content. The app is available free at the company’s web site and in Apple’s App Store.
‘Timeless Principles of Print’
McCue said social networks are resulting in a “huge influx of incoming messages and links people must sort through across multiple web sites just to stay up to date.” Flipboard, he said, intends to use “the timeless principles of print” to make social media “less noisy, more visually compelling, and ultimately more mainstream.”
In the iPad magazine, a user can flip through Facebook and Twitter sections that contain the most recent stories, photos, videos and other updates from friends in those networks. Links to content and images are rendered in the magazine, so there’s no need to click on link after link.
Users can create sections about topics or people, using Flipboard’s suggested topics, such as sports, news, tech or style. Content is added from feeds provided by the user’s social networks, or by Flipboard, or from popular Twitter feeds. Custom sections can also be created, and a user can choose from news feeds, such as from The Wall Street Journal or technology blogs.
While the exact business model wasn’t specified, Flipboard has indicated that revenue streams will include advertising and possibly some form of subscriptions.
Acquisition of Ellerdale
Also on Wednesday, Flipboard announced it has purchased the…
View full post on NewsFactor Network