It just might be the coolest app in a world where cool shows up every minute. It’s so cool that I’ve had conversations lately in which seasoned professionals actually have hypothesized that Flipboard could be the basis for a huge digital content traffic spike, and a platform from which new content can grow. Can it revolutionize the publishing business? It doesn’t need to. Newspapers and magazines will take care of themselves (see my last blog post). And there’s never a silver bullet for a business that has been so radically changed, anyway. Yet, Flipboard is going to be a positive development for print. And here’s why:
Numbers: The last reliable report I heard regarding Flipboard numbers was in mid-December. At that time it was roughly 15 million. It shows the kind of exponential growth that will put it on a track to be a force for tablet devices. Yes, it’s loaded with cool factor. But this cool factor seems to have connected with an insane amount of people who are very thirsty for content. Engagement with the app has increased 10 fold: Users are set to flip more than four billion pages this month, up from the iPad’s monthly average of 650 million.
The Print Mix: Opinion, discovery and photos. Remember photos? Remember news photos? Well, they’re back. Flipboard is a master mix of everything that has been lost in the transition from print to digital. It has shaken the obsession that aggregators have had with blogs that lack expertise and replaced it with an uncanny knack for finding the best-of-the-best by surveying the quirky, newly legit and old establishment of content. And it has great photos!
Business Model: Flipboard is showing every sign of working with publishers to get good content to a tablet audience instead of making readers jump through hoops. Although it started with USA Today, it has had no problem incorporating local content. It has had no problem bringing international content in, as well. It has shown every sign of taking the best from newspapers and magazines to come up with a best-of-breed consumer product. The business model is open, so far.
Bottom line, Flipboard is creating excitement around content, and I can’t remember anything doing that in a long time. Print-to-digital has been a rough run for publishing. I expect digital-to-tablet to be a lot smoother!
