What Flipboard does well and where it has room to grow

Flipboard allows users to consume news in a more personalized manner

It’s no surprise that many people consume their news via social media platforms. Our society has transformed into one that’s constantly on the move, demanding information in ways that are more convenient and accessible for a person on the go. While many people turn toward individual platforms like Twitter or Facebook, news aggregators like Flipboard have a high number of users as well and can not be ignored. A news aggregator brings in content from multiple outlets and places in on one platform for users to consume. Flipboard combines this functionality with a social media platform to connect users to one another as well for a personalized consumption of the news.

I like to think of Flipboard as Apple News meets Pinterest. If you’re familiar with both of these platforms, I think you may agree with me. It takes the typical layout of a news aggregator like Apple News and lets users pick what topics they are interested in and want to see headlines about. It then takes some perks of Pinterest, like saving certain articles (pinning) you may like and curating them to fit into a theme (board) that you want to revisit. In Flipboard, you can flip (pin) articles to create magazines (boards). These magazines can be shared and seen by others users of Flipboard, much how boards can be shared and seen on Pinterest.

Some other useful tools found in Flipboard is the explore page. This page provides access to articles related to all topics, which is important since your own feed is streamlined to your selected interests. This allows users to step outside their bubble of information to take in what’s happening in other corners of the world. One of the biggest issues I see with news aggregators is the streamlined news feeds made by users. While this can be beneficial because all information on a topic is in one place, it also is harmful since you are only getting the information you wish to see. This explore page combats this issue nicely. Flipboard curators also have a section on everyone’s homepage where they offer articles that they believe you need to know each day. While these still will be selective based on their biases, it is important that they exist because it adds on to what you have selected to be your bubble of information.

One issue we ran into with Flipboard was their paywalls. Many outlets were included in their curation of content, but for articles coming from The New York Times or The New Yorker, there were still access issues for users without subscriptions. This is because on Flipboard when a user clicks into an article, it takes them directly to the publication’s site, which relies on subscription access. This raises an interesting and much discussed problem in the industry about accessibility. How much of our content can be free and what should be payed for? If Flipboard were to eliminate paywalls, they may see even more popularity but until then, they have restricted access to users.

As a social tool and news aggregator, Flipboard is a competitor for bringing news to consumers. While there are still issues to address, it does a good job of personalizing feeds for consumers to digest their information.