Passionate about technology, media and chocolate eclairs, I've worked in web and print for over twenty years and now run a digital media consultancy in Scotland.
Product launches are scary things. You spend however long perfecting your product, but there’s no test like putting it in the hands of the public.
Flipboard is a new app for the iPad that got rave reviews all over the internet on the day it launched. Some of the nicest things that have ever been said about anything were said about Flipboard. It’s a free app that scans your friends’ Facebook and Twitter posts and displays their links and articles in a magazine-style layout. This is social media like the moviemakers would have done it.
Flipboard is undoubtedlly a killer app for the iPad. It has a beautiful, well-designed interface that could have realistically been conceived in a dream. It’s a social media aggregator that makes reading your feeds easy, pleasurable and convenient… I expect.
I say expect, because 24 hours after downloading it, I haven’t actually been able to use it. My first attempt to login to Facebook was met with a message that Flipboard was controlling logins, and when I tried Twitter, it told me Flipboard was over capacity, a familiar phrase to Twitter users, but over on Twitter, everything was OK.
And this was a problem for thousands of users keen to get started on Flipboard. They just couldn’t.
Hours after launch, Flipboard and fail were two words that were bounding around Twitter together. But it will survive this launch glitch because of it’s ‘revolutionary’ game-changer status.
From what little I’ve seen of it working, it rocks… big time. And I make no excuse for using such words here. If one app can make a thing of beauty from all the unconnected feeds, information, links and pictures, this one seems to be it. There are some foibles, but they will be ironed out, it’s 90% there, when it does actually get there that is.
It is, to use a cliche, a victim of its own success. Something so massively popular, that the infrastructure behind it cannot handle the throughput.
Twitter was buzzing with reviews and comments about its service:
@TelstarLogistic: I didn’t buy an iPad because I needed it; I bought it to get a front-row seat as a new medium emerges. Flipboard validates my strategy.
@creativemak: Almost cool enough to make me want an iPad.
@AlexInsideMedia: @Flipboard might be my deciding factor to finally getting an #iPad 
http://ht.ly/2fcmR – anyone tried it? thoughts?
@eur_1965: @flipboard should have charged $0.99, so they could have bought extra servers
@toestor: so flipboard … < …> I’ve tried for 2 days to connect twitter & fb to no avail. atm a service i can’t use /via @ //+1 to that #overhyped
An interesting comment came from media blogger Martin Belam, who said: “Great app, but is it just another way for journalists not to get paid?” He went on to explain how his content had been nicely laid in, but he had no control over it, nor was able to put his own advertising next to it.
There is a ‘layer’ in there that is doing quite a bit of jiggery-pokery with the content to reformat it. Let’s hope Flipboard open that up a bit, because for most of the second day, the one question floating round on the internet was: Is it legal?
But if it is the killer app it appears to be, it could actually help the media distribute news via social media… for money! Flipboard said, in tweets, that it had designed it so ‘mom and dad’ could use. And it certainly is that simple to use.
The format lends itself well to advertising. When they say it’s magazine-style, it’s glossy magazine-style thanks to iPad screen, and much as I hate adverts, I can see them working in Flipboard.
Now, let’s go and see if it’s working yet?
Good points Marc, I’m one of the non-initiates who would now be tempted towards an iPad because of apps like Flipboard but they should be charging for it. A lot of this venture capital funding is leading towards another dot com bubble burst!
Thanks Tom. A lot of people are saying it’s worth getting an iPad for.
You’re right, Flipboard could have easily charged for it, but I think they have their eyes on other financial models.
I’ve been using it today and in practice, although very, very nice, it would be good to have more control over what goes in and how it comes out. That might come with a paid ‘pro’ version, but what I suspect will happen is that Flipboard will make deals with news distributors, who will pay Flipboard for the luxury of ‘control’.