Flipboard is really, really cool. It launched earlier this week and has been an instant success, other than some server issues. In short, Flipboard is pioneering a new category of social magazine. The company just launched a free iPad app.
“Flipboard is mining the hundreds of millions of Web links posted each day on two of the world’s most popular outlets for sharing information and imagery, Facebook and Twitter.
All those links are automatically converted into a “social magazine” format that’s customized for anyone who allows Flipboard to sift through their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Instead of having to click through a hodgepodge of links, Flipboard users will be able to flip through digital pages with all the text and images already displayed on Apple’s hot-selling computer tablet.”
So what are the implications for mobile alumni engagement? Imagine being able to layer images from alumni events, articles that mention alumni in the news, sports highlights and student performances directly into the content stream of your alumni. This should support the social media efforts that are underway at most schools, assuming the content schools are creating is relevant and exciting to end readers. Maybe this is the first glimpse at the new category of alumni magazine that Andy Shaindlin detailed in his Alumni Futures blog post in June. Andy said “For better or worse, [the alumni magazine] will have to assume the interactive, dynamic and fast-changing form that more well-funded publications are already pushing to readers on new platforms and new devices.” Could this fit the bill?
A video is worth a million words, so I posted a clip of Flipboard in action.
Ever True!
Brent