Flipboard launches personalized, shareable magazine feature

Want to run a magazine? Too broke to afford an actual magazine? Flipboard might have just the thing for you. 

Flipboard, a news aggregation app released back in 2010, is deservedly popular. The software allows users to sift through, sort, and collate articles and photos from a wide variety of sites. It acts as a supplement to more traditional news sources such as newspapers and online magazines. 

So here's to a bit of good news for all the Flipboard fanatics out there: Beginning this week, Flipboard will allow users to create and share their own personal "magazines," which can then be shared with other users. In other words, with a few swipes of the finger, or a few taps on the mouse, you can become your very own David Remnick. Or Anna Wintour. Or Jill Abramson. 

"Just tap the + button next to articles, pick a name for your magazine, add a description and start flipping," reps for Flipboard wrote on the company blog. "You can create as many magazines as you want – My Picks, The SF Giants, Wedding Inspiration, Things to Read Later – and draw from virtually any source on Flipboard, including what’s being shared on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SoundCloud, LinkedIn and Tumblr."

Flipboard says in coming weeks, it will choose some of the best user-generated creations, and slap them up on the Flipboard blog. (On a side note, we might be able to imagine a personalized publication comprised solely of Twitter or Instagram or even SoundCloud posts. But a personalized magazine culled from LinkedIn updates? Far from scintillating, in our humble opinion.) 

Of course, as Mathew Ingram notes in a smart article over at PaidContent, it isn't just Ordinary Joe users that'll have the chance to make their own publications – advertisers and marketers will, too. 

"[O]ne overlooked element of the launch is that Flipboard is building e-commerce functionality into the app," Mr. Ingram writes. "Chief technology officer Eric Feng said some advertisers are already creating their own magazines using both their own ads and content from other sources. Those magazines could then be selected and highlighted by Flipboard’s algorithms just like any other effort by a Flipboard user." 

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