Flipboard is changing the way we consume and interact with news stories from all over the world. The company allows users to aggregate social feeds into a digital magazine. These magazines can be individual or shared with the wider community. Flipboard has started to hit critical mass with its 100 million registered users and 10 million digital magazines created by approximately 7 million people.
Launched in 2010, Flipboard was designed to be the world’s first social magazine for the iPad, allowing users to create their own personal magazines by pulling in updates from Facebook and Twitter. They could also follow specific news sources and websites like Good e-Reader or Techcrunch. There was also an ability to key in your feeds, and read any online publication with a valid RSS Feed. Publishers soon caught on, with newspapers and magazines allowing Flipboard to access content from their social media stream and own websites.
On Wednesday night, during a fireside chat with ReadWrite Flipboard CEO Mike McCue revealed that video ads will be coming to its magazines, and Chanel will be one of the first brands with a reel. “The world of TV, and the world of print, these worlds are merging,” he said. “We’re moving towards this … world where content can be atomized and reconstructed around interests or topics that someone’s really passionate about.”
Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo are all working towards video advertising platforms because they represent the next generation of revenue. Existing websites are often monetized by banner and skyscraper ads and they are crowding up web pages, publishers keep adding more and more stuff on the page. “The problem on the Web is that if you take a look at a website, the content is surrounded by all kinds of stuff, if you could turn off those banner ads, you would.” said McCue.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.