Flipboard - read your online articles like a magazine

Flipboard is a multi-content aggregator which is presented beautifully with a 'flippable' magazine-like user interface.

Table of contents

Introduction to Flipboard

Like any other social media platform, Flipboard presents a collection of posts (called ‘stories’) for the user to respond to. Popular content is presented on the main page as ‘cover stories’, while the rest of the magazine experience is presented as ‘magazines’. Magazines are user-created collections of stories containing the topics they are interested in and would like to collect.

During Flipboard’s initial signup process, recommended ‘Picks’ will be presented to the user to choose as topics for cover stories and a magazine called Picks. RSS feeds will also be presented here.

Creating a Flipboard magazine

One of the ways to use Flipboard is through the principle of a magazine. After the initial signup process was recommended ‘Pics’ were added, and an actual Flipboard magazine can be created. Additional magazines can also be created. Apart from the name, description and theme of the magazine, other options to think about will include how to share the magazine (i.e. public or private) and if/what friends (‘members’) can collaborate.

Apart from the ability to create your own custom magazine or multiple magazines – each with its own content type, Flipboard magazines can also be opened for collaboration and/or shared with others (to follow). Flipboard’s beautifully presented interface allows for an inspirational medium to share content between like-minded users (or flippers?).

Adding articles to a Flipboard magazine

There are various ways in which articles (or stories) can be added to a Flipboard magazine. Each time an article (now story) is added to a magazine, its followers will be notified. As with other social media platforms, the latest articles will be presented first.

Articles can be added to a Flipboard magazine by manually pinning (or flipping) a web page from almost any website. Stories from other Flipboard magazines and RSS feeds can also be pinned to another magazine.

A very easy way I found for flipping articles to a magazine is by using Chrome’s + Flip It extension.

Adding an RSS feed to Flipboard

A nice way to stay in touch with what’s happening on other people’s websites is to use Flipboard’s feed functionality. Full RSS feeds (as supposed to summarised RSS feeds) can be added to the Social area searching by searching for their URL. It seems like this functionality is only available on portable versions of Flipboard.

Feeds can also be ‘piped’ for viewing by the Flipboard community through their publishers’ page. After adding your site feed to the Flipboard publishers section and approval has been received, new publisher tools will be available to control these.

Conclusion

Flipboard is a multi-content aggregator which presents a collection of posts (called ‘stories’) for the user to respond to in a magazine format.