Popular news-reading app Flipboard has announced a major update and it includes allowing users to create their own personalized magazines for public viewing.
The Flipboard announcement says,
Using the new Plus “+” button found on items in Flipboard or by using the new Flipboard Bookmarket for the web, readers can fill their magazines with content that expresses a point of view, reflects personal tastes or shares ideas they find inspiring.
Well, basically it is going to count on its 50 million users to share their opinions and save their favorite stories creating a trail of “plussed” items that Flipboard will publicly associate with their online identities by default. So, knowing what people like is definitely a good piece of information which Facebook has capitalized on. Maybe Flipboard looks to achieve the same.
The new features aren’t intended for readers only. Flipboard hopes existing publishers will use its new functions to promote articles and other material from their archives:
For publishers this is a new way to share archival content, publish great collections or package together stories in a totally new way on Flipboard.
Because magazines are public, they can grow an audience and others can like items, comment on posts, or even subscribe to other people’s magazines. When people interact with a magazine, the curator learns about it through new Flipboard Notifications.
For each item that’s flipped into a magazine, attribution back to the source is preserved, and if the content is from a social network interactions such as commenting, retweeting or liking are reflected back to the originating social network.
Another feature announced is the “Content Search.” At the top of every page, readers can find a search box using which they can search for anything on Flipboard. The interesting thing is that the search results are also displayed in the form of a magazine.
Recently, Flipboard has been touted as a replacement for the deprecated Google Reader. Earlier this month, well-known venture capitalist John Doerr joined the board.
