iPad’s Flipboard – Your Social News, Your Way
Remember the days of traditional feed aggregators, and all the time you spent scanning RSS feeds searching for something relevant? Thanks to Mike McCue and his brainchild, Flipboard, those days are gone. If you own an iPad and haven’t downloaded this app yet, I suggest you stop reading this for a moment, go grab your iPad and download it!
Ready? Up until the Flipboard revolution, Twitter and Facebook had cornered the market on start up page social content. Aside from being referred to as one of the best mobile feed reading experiences seen yet, what makes Flipboard so cool, and important? Flipboard is an iPad app that creates your own personal social magazine by grabbing content from your social networks. Flipboard aggregates content quickly and then indexes it, putting an end to the tedious text heavy, list reading that you’re accustomed to. At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Ok, so what else?”
The simple looking interface hides some fun, powerful features. While Flipboard appears similar to every other aggregator, the difference becomes apparent with the interface. Flipboard scans your social networks for you and turns the endless list of feeds into a virtual magazine that you can, well, flip through. One of the coolest features of Flipboard is that underneath or alongside what you’re reading (depending on how you’re holding your iPad) is a panel displaying any Tweets linking to that article. You even have the option of Tweeting a response right from the Flipboard app. Ready to read the next page? A simple swipe of your finger and you’re there. Is it time to return to the main feed page? Tap the little “x” and you’re exactly where you want to be.
The fun doesn’t end there, though. Facebook and Twitter are not all that Flipboard has to offer. You can upload feeds from a variety of other sites, or play around with content from FlipTech or FlipPhotos. For an app introduced so recently, this one definitely has a lot to offer. While Flipboard is customizable, it also offers content bundled by topic. You can choose from pre-set “flipboards” tabs in business, technology, photos, etc.
So ok, it seems fun and cool, but what makes Flipboard so revolutionary? In the world of social content aggregation, Flipboard has set a new high standard that all other feed-reading apps will be expected to meet. Users of the iPad will be expecting similar technology and rich interfaces all over the device from this point on, and as far as I’m concerned, you can only expect Flipboard to keep getting better. As far as social content aggregators go, Mike McCue has introduced the Mercedes-Benz of feed-readers, and once people get a taste of this new app, it’s unlikely they’ll want to return to their old method of content aggregation. Flipboard has stepped up and set the bar. Is iPad officially in a league of its own now, or will another app attempt to meet the challenge and top Flipboard?
