One of the great attractions of magazines and newspapers over the internet has always been the ability to take them with you where ever you are and flip through the pages at your leisure.
With the release of the iPad and now the Flipboard app this freedom is now available in a fantastic electronic form.
Flipboard is a social magazine that brings to life the stories, photos, news and updates being shared across Twitter and Facebook. Released lat week and already one of the top free downloads for iPad users.
Users have the ability to flip through the pages of the magazine that is always updating and has fresh stories sourced from the millions of links shared on facebook and twitter. Navigation is very intuitive and having the ability to browse thorugh the magazine, "zoom in" on pictures and articles and of interest and link through to full articles and posts on the originating websites gives users an experience that can not be rivalled in print media.
A Look at Flipboard
Interest has been so great that Flipboard has been unable to keep up with the demand of users wanting linking through to their facebook and twitter accounts. The public content is still fairly raw and currently has limited categories to browse through however by sourcing articles, blogs, links that your friends and followers are looking at it will be able to intuitively have content available to you that will be of interest and you can update, like and share again the posts, blogs etc that have been promoted by your friends. For me that would be a logical track and the acquisition of Ellerdale will no doubt increase content relevency over time and yes I am one of the millions waiting for my facebook and twitter accounts to be linked which no doubt will make a huge difference as that is where the intellegent sharing really comes to the fore.
For me, an avid magazine reader and traditionalist in many ways this could just be the thing that gets me to move my page flipping fetish from print to pad.