Flipboard: How do you save digital journalism? By making it more like print
This is the story of how a former Twitter board member offered digital newspapers a new business model that rescues the principles of the traditional press. How? By creating Flipboard.
“Look what I found!”, says Marci McCue as she hands her iPhone to her husband. Looking at the screen, Mike can find no better reaction than: “What?!” The phone is showing Flipboard, a mobile app for reading, saving and sharing articles on a wide range of topics and interests. The reason for the surprise is the account of the Porto Tourism Association. With more than 180 “magazines” created, 3,400 articles shared and almost 300 followers, the profile impresses the founder of the social network, who was not expecting to see such an active Portuguese account on the platform.
Launched seven years ago, Flipboard is relatively unknown in Portugal compared with Facebook, Twitter or even Reddit. Abroad, however, it is already sizeable: it has 100 million monthly active users. Of that number, around 70 million people use Flipboard every week. There are also those who use it “every day, several times a day”. And in Portugal? Although the region is not yet supported, Mike McCue says the platform has “the same per capita reach” here as “in most European countries”. “It is a solid base”, says the creator of Flipboard and former member of Twitter’s board of directors, in an exclusive interview with ECO on the sidelines of Web Summit.
AI translation from the Portuguese. First published in ECO on 18 February 2018.