If there were two things missing from earlier versions of Flipboard, it was the ability to 1) bookmark content and 2) have conversations about it. Those are two features the Palo Alto, Calif., startup has included in Flipboard 2.0, launching on iPhone and iPad devices Tuesday.
"It's the most ambitious thing the company has ever done," Eric Feng, Flipboard's CTO, said of the app update in an interview at Mashable's offices last week. "It's launching us on a completely different trajectory."
Flipboard 2.0 looks pretty much the same as the version of Flipboard currently installed on your iPhone, Android or iPad: Content, whether news articles, Instagram pics, video or audio files, etc., are clipped and displayed in magazine-style grid spread across a near-infinite number of "flippable" pages. Click on a piece of content and you'll be able to view it in full; click play on an audio track and you'll be able to listen while you flip.
Since its launch three years ago, Flipboard has been feeding users billions of pieces of content through live, magazine-style feeds. With version 2.0, users -- as well as publishers, brands and advertisers -- can now make their own magazines with content they've found on Flipboard. "It's the first time people can program content back into Flipboard," says Feng.
Creating a magazine on Flipboard is not unlike creating a board on Pinterest. As you browse articles and videos about yoga poses on Flipboard or on the web, you could save ("flip") them to your own magazine of yoga poses by clicking on a "+" button in Flipboard or by clicking on Flipboard's new bookmarklet for web browsers. You can then edit your magazine using a web-based tool Flipboard is releasing in conjunction with the iOS update, and which it soon plans to bring to its apps. Once you're finished, you can share your magazine with your friends and to the rest of Flipboard's userbase, or keep it private.
A teacher could create a magazine with instructional materials to share with her students, for example; a football coach, video clips to share with his team. Indeed, users have already been using Flipboard this way, setting up Twitter lists to feed the content they want into custom Flipboard sections, Feng says.
Several publishers have already created custom magazines for Flipboard. Rolling Stone has created magazines for the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix with content from its archives. National Geographic has put together one for tigers.
Beyond the create-your-own-magazine tool, Flipboard 2.0 is packed with dozens of new features. Perhaps most welcome is the ability to search for content. Flipboard has an index of about 100 million pages -- Google's, by comparison, is above 30 trillion -- which you can use to find fresh content about, say, Japanese fashion or local sports. If you think about it, there isn't a great way to surface new content that isn't news on the web. Run a Google search for "cooking salmon," and you'll be directed to recipes and recipe websites that have been popular for years, not brand-new recipes for cooking salmon. Flipboard is, in my experience, now the best way to find recent content in lifestyle and niche categories.
Another welcome addition to Flipboard 2.0 is the ability target people in the comments using @username, a tagging feature already employed by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Its inclusion will, I believe, make Flipboard a less isolated browsing experience, allowing you to share content more easily within the app and to help build discussions around it. You'll also be alerted when someone likes on an item in one of your own magazines, just one of several push notifications Flipboard has added to bring users back more frequently.
Paths to Monetization
Flipboard is also dipping its toe into ecommerce. The company has integrated products and product descriptions from handmade goods e-tailer Etsy, which renders like a (very pretty) store catalog on Flipboard. Click the "buy" button, and your item will be added to a shopping cart. You can complete your purchase via an in-app browser window on Etsy.com.
The integration marks a new revenue opportunity for Flipboard. The company will receive a cut of every Etsy sale made through the app, a cut higher than the standard rate for affiliates (which is typically between 5% and 12%), Feng tells us. If and when Flipboard brings more retailers into its app -- something Flipboard is planning to make self-service -- it may launch a "Shop" section, Marci McCue, Flipboard's head of marketing, tells us.
Flipboard has been running ads in its app for about two-and-a-half years now. Publishers were encouraged to sell ads to run in Flipboard to advertisers, but some publishers, including The New Yorker and Wired, stopped, citing competition with their own tablet apps.
"It's like giving all of your content away," a source at Conde Nast said at the time. "It becomes one more thing for salespeople to sell and it doesn't make sense to split revenue with outside partners, when you could concentrate on your own iPad app and website instead."
In the months since, Flipboard has built up its own internal ad sales team to six, who now (in addition to partner agency OMD) sell ads to run in and across content from publishers' websites. "We just send them a check," Feng explains. "Publishers like it."
As Flipboard scales, so does its ability to achieve significant marketshare in the mobile advertising and retail markets. Feng tells us Flipboard now has 50 million registered users, up from 20 million in August. That growth is all the more impressive given that Flipboard didn't launch on any new platforms or devices during that period, and that it's user base is limited to those with iOS and Android devices. Flipboard's potential targeting capabilities are impressive too. It now has up to three years of data about its users -- about what sources they subscribe to, what and how long they read and soon, pending additional retail integration, what they shop for.
Flipboard 2.0 is rolling out to iOS devices today, and will be coming to Android "soon," says Feng.