Flipboard: It could be your personal magazine and it’s really wonderful!
It could be your personal magazine and it’s really wonderful!
Katia Kolpakidou 4.1.2017
Flipboard was originally opened in 2010 and it was created at that time for Apple Inc’s IPad. Later of course because of the big interest of the users is was launched on the iPhone and iPod Touch and after that it was accessed through a web browser and by applications for Microsoft Windows and macOS and as mobile app for iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
But what exactly is it and how can you use it? It’s a social network aggregation, based in Palo Alto, in California, with offices in New York, Vancouver and Beijing. Mike McCue and Evan Doll created Flipboard in 2010 and then it increased unexpectedly. The stories that you can discover through that platform affect your life in a beautiful way. You can share your passion with everybody and that’s why it’s so popular.
Flipboard is a brilliant application for those who don’t want just to be informed but for those who want to gain knowledge and to produce their own, personalized magazine. Until 2016 Flipboard claims that there were 28 million magazines created by its users!
Flipboard has 8.000.000 subscribers as well as many advertisers of many kind of products with a special and creative way. Everybody can choose what to read. In our modern era most of the news are “directed” by each publisher’s personal interest. Through this app, everyone has access to independent articles, by openminded freelancer reporters that can create their own magazines without any cost or “editors” criticizing their work!
Gathering all the info from social media, news sites, blogs & forums, according to each user preferences, Flipboard is rapidly evolving into a significant media channel. Although it is created to be used in smartphones & tablets, Flipboard has the traditional flipping between the pages. Flipboard is generally built on selectivity and that’s why we can save so much time by using it.
You can only choose what you are interested in and it makes the work for you. Are you an architect? Learn about similar subjects… Do you love traveling … you will find many articles about amazing journeys. In this platform you have the world in your hands… but not the similar world with everybody — your own.
What attracts people to choose Flipboard? Its design, the easy way in its use, that it is original and of course the organization that it offers. It provides a totally new form … you don’t flip it, you scroll it! Of course one of the biggest advantages of this app is that it is totally free. Free for its users of course, not for its advertisers which is the only way for the platform to earn money. Do you want to read, do you want to see pictures or videos? Flipboard is there for you.
When you log in to Flipboard on the web, the first thing you’ll see are many amazing pictures, the stories of the day and the big news. You can Sign in through Facebook, Twitter or Google. Of course you can also create a totally new profile through the web site. I chose to sign in through my Facebook profile and then the discovery started. I chose my topics easily (there are so many of them) and then I was ready. Scroll down and you can see “cover stories, highlights from everything you follow”, stories from other people, publications, topics, and Flipboard magazines that you follow. Stories are organized with a beautiful and sorted way. You can click and open every story that you are interested in through the original web page or you can add it to your magazine.
All these are so wonderful but there exists another side. Many people say that Flipboard has been having big financial problems the last two years. Can it survive if there isn’t any new thing? Ok, it added some things, but only in the accessibility of the site. When it started it was the top IOS App but now IOS and many other companies are its biggest competitors.
Some people say the problem is in the quality of the product and others that generally people do not like news apps. I will not adopt any view but I will only say that: it’s very important nowadays that we can collect information from many sites and many apps and it’s wonderful that we have a big variety. So before judging any magazine we have to understand how many people are working “behind the scenes”. Moreover we all are so different, and we don’t have the same preferences. For some people it may be best to get informed and for others not to.
So, if after that you are not sure about using it, I suggest to everybody to try it. You don’t have something to lose and on the other hand you can find a kind of a solution to save time by not spending it by reading information you are not interested in.
