A new way to view your social media

Digital Chameleon Blog

A new way to view your social media

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

One of the (free) iPad apps that I’m really enjoying is Flipboard. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a “social magazine.” If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, and have an iPad, proceed immediately to the app store and download Flipboard.

Once downloaded, you can enter your Facebook and/or Twitter details and those streams are turned into “magazines.” It takes the links from your feeds and puts them into a visually appealing and easy to read format that’s attractive and does look like a magazine. There’s no advertising on Flipboard which begs the question – what’s the business model?

I’m in the process of trying to figure out how to take the Flipboard version of my Digital Chameleon Facebook stream and distribute it as an enewsletter. I would think other marketers would want to do similar, as it makes a visually (not to mention information-rich) compelling product. Maybe a business model here?

Flipboard is less than a year old, and if you read the reviews from hardcore social media types you’ll see that it does have limitations, but I love the concept. It’s an engaging new way to look at our social media, expressly made for the iPad platform. It’s interesting to see the differences between the look and feel of my personal Facebook feed, versus the Digital Chameleon on Facebook, versus my Twitter feed . The content is “clickable,” and can be shared and commented on from the application. It surely makes Twitter easier to read and make sense of. Flipboard apparently senses “engaged” items with lots of comments or retweets, as well as photos, so that it filters out the “best” content and visuals.

Isn’t it funny how we always approach a new medium/platform with our “old platform” sensibilities? iPad is an exciting new device but I wonder how long it will take before content developed for the iPad will start to look less like a newspaper or magazine and more like something we can’t yet imagine.