Share original content with Flipboard Android 2.0
The magazine-style news app brings magazine curation to Android and adds ways for people to track the popularity of curated items.
Flipboard, the popular news-reading app, is making it easier for people to add -- and track -- their original content to Flipboard with the latest magazine curation features for Android devices.
The magazine curation feature, which lets users collect articles around a specific theme or subject matter into a Flipboard magazine is now available for Android phones and tablets, and online as a Web-based editing tool that also provides metrics.
Flipboard introduced the magazine curation feature for iOS in late March, gaining 6 million users since the launch. It's network of 56 million users have created 1 million magazines so far.
Eugene Wei, Flipboard's Head of Product says the company's user base is split evenly among iOS and Android users, so he expects Android 2.0 to have similar results to its Apple counterpart.
Flipboard's magazine creation starts with people tapping the "+" button on items within Flipboard or using the app's bookmarklet to save items from the Web. The new Android version will also let users save an item from other apps, like YouTube, or a Web browser or their own photo galleries. In-app sharing lets users share the magazine with text messages, e-mail or Pinterest.
The new Web-based Flipboard lets curators have more control, Wei said. It lets users change the order of their items, delete content and view what items from their magazines have been shared the most by other users.
"Each person who creates a magazine is the editor of their own magazine," he said. "It'd be cool for them to continue to have more influence over the structure and narrative of their magazine."
Wei said more metrics tools are coming, akin to what bloggers can do with online formats.
With this new emphasis on magazine curation, Flipboard also needs to pay attention to users who don't create content. Half of Flipboard's users only use the app for reading, according to Wei. Flipboard's next focus is on improving search, which means establishing better magazine recommendations for users and creating an easy way to search for magazines among friends.
Adding curated magazines beefs up Flipboard's bank of content, which will help the company's search results overall, he said. The company has also struck a deal with The Financial Times, letting Financial Times subscribers read the newspaper's content, which is behind a paywall online, through Flipboard. It currently has a similar deal with the New York Times.
Android 2.0 is available on Google Play and Kindle.