Flipboard and Twitter: a good match
A number of leaks suggest that Twitter has been talking to Flipboard about a potential acquisition, although any decision has apparently been put on hold, but would be worth something like one billion dollars’ worth of shares.
This is almost a family affair: Mike McCue, who set up Flipboard with Evan Doll, was previously a member of Twitter’s board of directors, but left on friendly terms after both parties agreed that the two companies’ direction could lead to a conflict of interest. Flipboard has already been through four financing rounds, raising 160 million dollars in the process, and has earnings of around 50 million euros, with some 100 million active users. That said, this user number is fairly relative and dependent on agreements with makers that preinstall the app in their devices, such as Samsung, which recently ended its arrangement with the firm, prompting the company’s estimated value to fall.
Twitter’s interest in Flipboard makes sense. On the one hand, it fits in with previous acquisitions, which tend to be about incorporating new talent: and there is no denying that McCue and his team have done a great job in developing their product. At the same time, the app’s characteristics have much in common with Twitter: in both cases we’re talking about products that people use to keep informed and to access information.
Nevertheless, these are very different products: Flipboard is essentially about eye-candy, offering an attractive way to access news using a visual metaphor based on traditional magazines; Twitter on the other hand has evolved considerably, and is no long about telling your friends where you’re having dinner, and has now become pretty much the planet’s heartbeat, a latter day teletype keeping us abreast of the latest news. But there is also a certain bi-directionality here: in the same way that Twitter can be used to send, reply, or spread news, Flipboard can be used to edit our own magazines, becoming a content curator for topics that we want to become influencers over.
From the perspective of users, the proximity between both companies could lead to interesting new products, such as producing magazines with links provided by people we follow on Twitter, or popularity indicators. There is a clear fit here between two companies with products that have generated widespread interest. For the moment, everything seems to suggest that the talks are on hold, but anyway… the possibility still looks pretty interesting!
(En español, aquí)
