The folks at Flipboard have embarked on a quest to “transform how people discover and share content” through an innovative new offering that combines the “beauty and ease” of print with the power of social media.
What does that mean exactly? Say hello to the Flipboard App for iPad, a so-called “social magazine” that coalesces in traditional print fashion the articles, posts, pics, news and updates that originate from across Facebook and Twitter.
“With over 1 billion messages posted every day, social networks are quickly becoming the primary way people discover and share content on the Web. The result is a huge influx of incoming messages and links people must sort through across multiple web sites just to stay up to date,” said Mike McCue, Flipboard’s CEO. “We believe the timeless principles of print can make social media less noisy, more visually compelling and ultimately more mainstream.”
The free Flipboard app was admittedly inspired by the typical look of print publications. But the app fuses together a social media user’s content within the social magazine, rendering links and images inside the digital publication.
“Flipping through pages” of this social magazine means the Facebook and Twitter sections allow readers to flip through the latest stories, photos and updates from friends. Readers can also create sections around the people or topics that people have the most interest in – like sports, news, tech and style.
Flipboard has secured better than $10 million in Series A funding and also generated financial support from heavyweight investors and celebs like Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and actor Ashton Kutcher.
