Flipboard: Your Personalized Magazine App

One of the best free apps for the Apple iPad, is Flipboard. If you want a one stop shop for reading current newsworthy content in an engaging and print quality fashion, Flipboard will dazzle.

Content is generated from the friends in your social networks and the publishers you want to follow. Flipboard aggregates and organizes all this information in a personable, magazine style layout.

Some of you out there maybe saying this is nothing really new in that RSS feeds accomplish the same thing. You'd be correct in that the information is being syndicated through a feed. However, the beauty is in the presentation and layout of the articles inside the Flipboard application. With RSS feeds you get just a list of text and images. With Flipboard you get a whole different look.

To explore, you flip through pages of content feeds in traditional page turning style. To read the article, you click inside the box and what will appear is a snippet of the article. If you want to read it in full, you can click in the lower portion of the page to be transferred to the website.

Due to the iPad's form factor mirroring the size of a standard magazine (7.31" x 9.50"), it is most suitable for publishing in portrait mode. What comes from this is a clean, beautiful presentation. Text and images standout more. Users are engaged more with the application through finger gestures making it an interactive digital magazine.

Flipboard isn't perfect. One gripe I have is that it doesn't let you choose which website you want to browse. Instead, you have to choose among their approved websites. Another gripe is that it only lets you have up to two pages of favorites.

Currently, Flipboard is free as an application and the publishers who work with Flipboard are offering their content for free as well.

Flipboard is venture cap backed with over $60 million in funding to date. Players include Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Index Ventures, Jack Dorsey, Ashton Kutcher, among others.

Apple said in March 2011 that it has sold 15 million iPads worldwide. Flipboard said that in September said that it had over 3.5 million downloads since it's app was released some 18 months ago. Those are some pretty good numbers.

Still, the company has to convert flips into revenue. One obvious thing is to place ads in between flips. Another is to have the reader pay for premium content. Recently in the Apple iOS 5 release, the Apple iPad Newstand app appeared allowing users to pay for news and magazine content. The app icon appears right on the first screen. This seemingly could steal away some of Flipboards' thunder..

Flipboard can be viewed as a new kind of browser - one that is a window into paid content. It could open up the door to a new kind of subscription model for consumers and publishers. For example, suppose Flipboard created a content network where publishers of websites would be asked to join with a share of ad revenue. This revenue could be percentage split based upon the number of views to the article and ad impressions generated. Flipboards' role would be to promote content streams and bring in advertisers to match goods and services with the content stream.

Flipboard is the very reason why you would want to go out and own an iPad. It is a very good marriage between tablet and content that makes reading a pleasurable and personal experience.

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.