Flipboard brings you a new way to browse Facebook stories
In an old post I highlighted social media’s ability to stop information overload by throttling the news feed: tools like Facebook automatically choose the stories that are most likely to introduce me.
However for many social media users it is the ability to see all the news as published by friends that is attractive. Twitter users are past masters at processing hundreds of tweets per hour to pick out the ones that matter.
If you are in the latter camp and full scale information “waterboarding” is your preference, then Flipboard is the tool for you – not only does it display everything and let you flick through it fast; it automatically converts the stories your friends share on Facebook and displays the source material – a youtube link becomes the youtube video itself, a Sky News wall post link shows the article from the website.
The smooth “flip action” is great: you use your finger to turn the pages and this makes for a fantastic news browsing experience – for me its world news with my Facebook friends updates thrown in.
In a recent edition of Little Nudge I recommended dusting off your Google Reader account and getting it set up with the right news feeds to your taste whether celebrity, tech or financial. Flipboard is one of the reasons – look at how it transforms your Google Reader news into a very readable newspaper below:
Flipboard makes a great looking newspaper, on the fly
The message for social media marketers in 2011 is clear – don’t expect your Facebook fans or blog readers just to be looking at your stories via the web – they may be using their Ipad and flipping through at an even faster rate than you realise.
Tagged: facebook, flipboard, information overload, postaweek2011, sky news, twitter, waterboarding
Web 2 Concepts 
Don’t forget that most of your Facebook fans/likers will *never* own an iPad…
True, but since Flipboard is an app not tied to Apple, I’d expect to see it on PlayBook and Android tablets pretty soon after launch.
Tablets are set to be a big consumer hit too aren’t they..?
Android tablets have been around for quite a while now but it’s not available on them. Flipboard don’t seem to be that fussed about Android either (‘for now we are focusing on the iPad’): http://getsatisfaction.com/flipboard/topics/flipboard_for_android
The manufacturers would like them to be, yeah. But IMHO, it will eventually go the same way as desktop machines, laptops and smartphones – i.e. once the market saturates, the vast majority will have gone for the cheaper customisable options, with only a small minority buying expensive locked-down Apple products.
iPods bucked that trend because they are basically a single-use product (whereas computers, smartphones and tablets are not) that worked and looked good and weren’t massively overpriced.