Flipboard for iPad app review
Flipboard is a new, free application for the iPad which has one basic function: to take your social networking tools (read: Facebook and Twitter) and turn them into social "magazines." As you can see from the screenshots -- which are all culled from my Twitter stream -- the application is very attractive. Read on for my full impressions.
After downloading Flipboard you enter your Twitter and Facebook details into separate streams, and those streams are then turned into "magazines," -- and they do, indeed look just like magazines. The attractive print-style layouts present you with pages of recents tweets, articles (pulled from the links in the tweets of those you follow), and the opportunity to respond from right within the app itself. What's not to love?
Well, it's got its limitations. First off -- it's not primarily a communication tool, in that while you can respond, you don't see any of the peripheral information that is available on Twitter: people who respond to you that you don't follow, for instance, are nowhere to be found, leaving the app to present Twitter as something of a closed circuit. Additionally, any re-tweets using Twitter's official Retweet function are not here, either. Beyond that, anything you want to do within Twitter beyond reply -- such as view a profile or follow a new person -- loads you into Safari. In this way, the integration experiences reminds us of the Kin's clunky realizations of Facebook and Twitter... and that's not a good thing.
Of course, Flipboard isn't a Twitter app, so our complaints are relatively picky. As a social magazine, what it presents is... hmm... a little uneven as well. Beyond saying over and over how attractive it is (love the font choices!), I can say that many images render extremely poorly because Twitter functions on small, low quality images and any resizing up causes our eyes to bleed. Moreover, because it turns each link tweeted into an article on a "page," we noticed how often many of the people we follow tweet the same link, the same story, the same meme... and Flipboard seems to deal with that by simply skipping over duplicated links -- a fine strategy, we get what you're going for, but because the application also filters out any text tweeted with the link, the "conversations" suddenly seem pretty broken to us. On top of that, as of now, it's having some serious issues displaying certain blogs -- we're seeing tags and meta data exposed all over the place in a way that makes, well, reading, a little difficult.
Flipboard, rather unsurprisingly, is awash in Web 2.0-ness, and as such, many have noted its failure to expose author attribution in a way that's helpful or accurate... instead, we get to see who "shared" the item, which looks and feels pretty misleading, and it's something we wouldn't be surprised to see evolve or change as the app develops. In fact, in the app's provided FlipTech feed, you get semi-proper attribution -- TechCrunch articles appear under the "TechCrunch" name, but I can't tell if the article was written by MG Siegler or Michael Arrington -- a distinction that may not matter to some, but certainly will to plenty. Slightly more troubling is the fact that FlipBoard essentially scrapes sites of their content and reformats it for display on its own servers, which seems to us like a definite copyright no-no -- we can't imagine too many publishers are going to be happy to see their content ganked like this without compensation or attribution. We don't know all the answers here, but we'd bet that Flipboard is about to get some very serious calls from curious lawyers in the near future.
Finally, the app can be terribly slow to load, and it doesn't update or refresh fast enough to suit the most avid social networkers. Of the two iPads I worked with in testing, one of them has still failed to load in any account information because of server overload, and the other is running at least 15 minutes behind Twitter's actual timeline, though it seems to have an easier time staying on top of Facebook.
Now, I like many people, use Twitter primarily as a working tool (plus for joking around and talking about food), and Facebook as a family and friends tool, so their respective "magazines" have incredibly different character (I'm not screenshotting any of the Facebook stream because it looks exactly the same as the shots I've presented here, and because I really doubt most of the people I went to third grade with want to be on Engadget). While I'd say that, overall, my Twitter magazine is more interesting than the Facebook magazine, it's also far, far more repetitive -- but maybe that's just because my circle of people I follow is rather small and insulated. There are other bugs I'm assuming will be worked out -- such as the fact noted above that in my check, not nearly every Tweet was represented, they update extremely slowly, and they are not always presented in the order that they actually appeared -- all issues that are very problematic for a social conversation tool. And, last but not least, this morning when I loaded up the app for the first time in twelve hours, everything from yesterday has ceased to exist, and was replaced by a new "magazine" -- roughly three pages of tweets from the last two or three hours. So, if I wanted to look through anything older, well, as far as I can tell, I'm out of luck.
Which leads me to the question... who is this going to be useful for? It's an interesting idea, of course, but who follows enough people on Twitter to make this application truly entertaining? I follow almost 200 people, and have almost 2,000 followers -- so this application allows me to interact with far less people than I do on a normal basis, i.e., just those nearly 200 that I follow. Like I said, that's not going to be a drawback for everyone, but it will be for some (such as myself). Don't get me wrong -- Flipboard has a lot of potential to be an engaging and powerful new way to look at our social media. It just doesn't have enough meat to keep me interested yet. For now, it's just like that subscription to Vogue I got a few years back: it seemed like a great idea at the time, but turned out to be suspiciously lacking in content in actuality. Hey, at least this one doesn't take up as much space!
After downloading Flipboard you enter your Twitter and Facebook details into separate streams, and those streams are then turned into "magazines," -- and they do, indeed look just like magazines. The attractive print-style layouts present you with pages of recents tweets, articles (pulled from the links in the tweets of those you follow), and the opportunity to respond from right within the app itself. What's not to love?
Well, it's got its limitations. First off -- it's not primarily a communication tool, in that while you can respond, you don't see any of the peripheral information that is available on Twitter: people who respond to you that you don't follow, for instance, are nowhere to be found, leaving the app to present Twitter as something of a closed circuit. Additionally, any re-tweets using Twitter's official Retweet function are not here, either. Beyond that, anything you want to do within Twitter beyond reply -- such as view a profile or follow a new person -- loads you into Safari. In this way, the integration experiences reminds us of the Kin's clunky realizations of Facebook and Twitter... and that's not a good thing.
Of course, Flipboard isn't a Twitter app, so our complaints are relatively picky. As a social magazine, what it presents is... hmm... a little uneven as well. Beyond saying over and over how attractive it is (love the font choices!), I can say that many images render extremely poorly because Twitter functions on small, low quality images and any resizing up causes our eyes to bleed. Moreover, because it turns each link tweeted into an article on a "page," we noticed how often many of the people we follow tweet the same link, the same story, the same meme... and Flipboard seems to deal with that by simply skipping over duplicated links -- a fine strategy, we get what you're going for, but because the application also filters out any text tweeted with the link, the "conversations" suddenly seem pretty broken to us. On top of that, as of now, it's having some serious issues displaying certain blogs -- we're seeing tags and meta data exposed all over the place in a way that makes, well, reading, a little difficult.
Flipboard, rather unsurprisingly, is awash in Web 2.0-ness, and as such, many have noted its failure to expose author attribution in a way that's helpful or accurate... instead, we get to see who "shared" the item, which looks and feels pretty misleading, and it's something we wouldn't be surprised to see evolve or change as the app develops. In fact, in the app's provided FlipTech feed, you get semi-proper attribution -- TechCrunch articles appear under the "TechCrunch" name, but I can't tell if the article was written by MG Siegler or Michael Arrington -- a distinction that may not matter to some, but certainly will to plenty. Slightly more troubling is the fact that FlipBoard essentially scrapes sites of their content and reformats it for display on its own servers, which seems to us like a definite copyright no-no -- we can't imagine too many publishers are going to be happy to see their content ganked like this without compensation or attribution. We don't know all the answers here, but we'd bet that Flipboard is about to get some very serious calls from curious lawyers in the near future.
Finally, the app can be terribly slow to load, and it doesn't update or refresh fast enough to suit the most avid social networkers. Of the two iPads I worked with in testing, one of them has still failed to load in any account information because of server overload, and the other is running at least 15 minutes behind Twitter's actual timeline, though it seems to have an easier time staying on top of Facebook.
Now, I like many people, use Twitter primarily as a working tool (plus for joking around and talking about food), and Facebook as a family and friends tool, so their respective "magazines" have incredibly different character (I'm not screenshotting any of the Facebook stream because it looks exactly the same as the shots I've presented here, and because I really doubt most of the people I went to third grade with want to be on Engadget). While I'd say that, overall, my Twitter magazine is more interesting than the Facebook magazine, it's also far, far more repetitive -- but maybe that's just because my circle of people I follow is rather small and insulated. There are other bugs I'm assuming will be worked out -- such as the fact noted above that in my check, not nearly every Tweet was represented, they update extremely slowly, and they are not always presented in the order that they actually appeared -- all issues that are very problematic for a social conversation tool. And, last but not least, this morning when I loaded up the app for the first time in twelve hours, everything from yesterday has ceased to exist, and was replaced by a new "magazine" -- roughly three pages of tweets from the last two or three hours. So, if I wanted to look through anything older, well, as far as I can tell, I'm out of luck.
Which leads me to the question... who is this going to be useful for? It's an interesting idea, of course, but who follows enough people on Twitter to make this application truly entertaining? I follow almost 200 people, and have almost 2,000 followers -- so this application allows me to interact with far less people than I do on a normal basis, i.e., just those nearly 200 that I follow. Like I said, that's not going to be a drawback for everyone, but it will be for some (such as myself). Don't get me wrong -- Flipboard has a lot of potential to be an engaging and powerful new way to look at our social media. It just doesn't have enough meat to keep me interested yet. For now, it's just like that subscription to Vogue I got a few years back: it seemed like a great idea at the time, but turned out to be suspiciously lacking in content in actuality. Hey, at least this one doesn't take up as much space!




























/gag
@BigD145 I unfollowed Engadget because of the tweetspam, Maybe I should make a new account with sites like this, and use it on that app......... But I do not have an iPad #UselessComment
got it, not really blown away by it
Yay, my life is one step closer to being like Gossip Girl! One step closer to happiness!
Tried it, not too impressed/required in my life. I like this new concept of iPad app reviews though, keep it up!
@Almo Sucker
@Juggernaut408
Heaven forbid others like something you don't, eh?
@Almo Exactly. Thank You. =P
@Almo
"not too impressed/required in my life"
Like the iPad itself?
@Critic2029
Of course, no one can possibly say an iPad is an absolute necessity, it simply isn't. However, as a premium gadget, I'm quite happy with it in the sense of portability, ease of use while travelling/on flights, browsing net, sorting e-mails, watching videos, playing apps, listening to music etc.. Does everything I require from an on-the-go device on a lovely 10" screen. Can a netbook do all that? Sure. But I don't want one. So until new decent/less limited tablets start to actually get released, I'll happily enjoy it knowing that Apple iDevices tend to retain high resale value and I'll easily recouperate 90% of what I paid for it when it's time to jump elsewhere. Simples.
@Critic2029 Wow, what an incisive critique.
@Almo
Bravo! I reward you 5 internets.
@Almo
well, agreed.
even without connection to Twitter and Facebook it is a pretty impressive news reading app.
Your review is exactly how I feel. It has great potential though but obviously some very big flaws that need to be fixed. Showing content in a non chronological order really kills any usefulness of context in many cases.
This thing is awesome.
I got it and like it. It's free so what is there to complain about!
@jsbaugh Well, it's part of my job... :)
For a while, I've felt like Facebook's mix of pics, links, notes, and status messages would be ideal for parsing into a nice "news-y" layout, so I'm happy to see someone finally take the plunge. It's not perfect, but it's a great beginning. It does make consuming content more pleasant, even if the utility is lacking.
Perfect for reading the latest Windows Phone 7 articles by Paul Thurrott ;D
@kallekenkel
I freaking despise Paul Thurrott. He's like the Ann Coulter of Microsoft - a total wack job who is missing that ever-critical dick filter. I have no idea how Leo can stand him. And just to fend off the fruity fanboi accusations, the only Apple products in my house are iPods, half of which are rockboxed.
@Matty K oh this is getting OT. I just referenced Paul because he's in the article pic. I disagree btw. Yes he's a MS guy, but he's very critical about what MS does and others do and makes very informed statements imo.
I wish twitter's layout was similar to this by default. Nice app.
I understand that there will always be people who simply need to search for the negative in things....Too bad, as you miss out on some really fun stuff. Flipboard does a wonderful job of presenting stories....Really wonderful. I created a twitter account just for this, following all the people who tweet stories that interest me. I have a perfect magazine.
I am honestly blow away by it. As for the people who claim not to be, I would love to hear what they are using instead that does blow them away!
its screwed right now, its currently not accepting any facebook or twitter profile adds!
I want to use it but I still get the message saying that they can't except new user's facebook and twitter accounts at the time.
Made me want to get an iPad for a split second. And then another second came...
I've read about 10 articles on this app within the last 2 days. I can't remember another app ever getting this much coverage!
@Rpie74
Deep pockets maybe?
@Rpie74 yeah it's everywhere (hence the infrastructure overload). Still wondering what the business model here is, since it's free.
@Rpie74 What pisses me off about all the coverage is that their servers have been overloaded since yesterday morning, and no one mentions that because they all got in via early press invites. I guess there was a 5 minute period last night when the Sign In servers worked, but most people can't use this thing, which makes it a waste of time until they figure out how to use a load balancer.
The message says "We are working for the next several hours on deploying new server architecture" and it has said that since yesterday morning.
@pasmith I'm sure plenty of people DID get press invites, but I definitely did not. I saw Scoble tweeting about it and downloaded it. It took me a few hours to get in, but eventually it clicked.
So we are going to get a daily dose of iPhone/iPad reviews. Sweet!!!
I remember when Mr. Joshua Topolsky said Engadget wasn't in the business of reviewed software.
@axemachine Yes, we mean to step up our app reviews, for sure!
@Laura June
Sorry I forgot the /s
I'd rather this thing create a magazine from my Google Reader account then Twitter/FB.
@dubg That is an awesome idea!
@dubg
or how about my iGoogle page?
@dubg they already have apps for that, like daily page or something like that, ive tried it, and it sorta sucks, so im hesitant with this app
@dubg
Early Edition app is my preference thus far.
@Zeroexe43 I realize there are apps that do this to some degree already. I've been using Reeder on my iPad/iPhone religiously. It's just that I find the layout of Flipboard compelling, but my Google Reader feed offers more substance then my Twitter/FB. I'm seeing a lot of big empty spaces with single quotes and no context.
So what it comes down to is... Where's the meat?
The only thing I've heard about this app is that people can't get their accounts linked in, so surprised to see a review up already.
so now engaget reviews apps? No iphone news lets just make some huh
@sandwich2 We've been reviewing apps for a while. Get used to it!
@Laura June
Nice case, where did you get it?
@ldx2000 Etsy!
@Laura June
Thank you, Jesus these whiners are so annoying. I'm glad you all put this out here, definitely needs some work but I see MASSIVE potential for this, especially if they can get all the pages working like the flip style ones, then add rss support. Oh man this thing would get more use than pulse as a news reader for me.
To the ipad hates, lol, keep hating while no one notices what your saying. I'm sure your mom cares about your opinions.
@Hyakku obviously people notice... You just replied.
@Laura June
Which case? I couldnt find a pic of it on the review gallery!
yah been using this app for the last two days, it crashed a few times yesterday but now its back to normal. I wish it would do push services, automatically updating itself in the background.
I've seen phone (and actual product) reviews that were shorter than this app review. : /