Flipboard is perhaps the most well-known of the magazine-style news reading apps. It aggregates content primarily from the user’s connected social networks including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. It also displays content from a plethora of official content providers, consisting of a variety of blogs and news sources. There are some interesting news sources that a user can subscribe to. These content channels include Stumbleupon, PocketHits (popular content being saved on the Pocket reading service), Audio Content, Video Content, Instagram Popular, Reddit for Flipboard, and Local channels. Content can also be added from RSS feeds a user subscribes to via their Google Reader account. Flipboard selects to display content based upon how popular it is on the web and the users’ connected social networks. Since it supports so many sources, it does a very good job of finding relevant news. The Flipboard interface is probably the most aesthetically pleasing of all the apps reviewed in this post. It sports well-organized pages that animate as you flip through them as if it were a physical magazine. The reading experience for articles is also excellent, with a clean, well-formatted view with easy-to-read text. Flipboard allows saving to Pocket, Instapaper, and Readability. Content is sharable through the most popular social networks including Google Plus. One thing that really annoys me about Flipboard is the panel limitation. If you subscribe to many channels like me, you will soon discover a box that says you have more sources available for viewing. They can be viewed, but not in the same elegant manner as the other sources. It causes the continuity of the app design to break. Since the app’s design is probably its greatest strength, I consider this a major flaw.
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social media
There are 18 posts tagged social media (this is page 3 of 4).
Reader’s Question: What Makes a Blog Post Go Viral?
I received the following email from a reader in response to my previous post, Jonah Peretti, Founder of BuzzFeed—What Makes Something Go Viral?:
Hi Paul,
Stumbled on your blog via google. Pretty cool stuff you write about! I have a quick question about your article about stuff going viral! Have you found anything about how Blogs can make use of it? How would you go about it? Now that would be interesting to hear!
I am probably not the most qualified blogger to answer this question, but I will attempt to extrapolate an answer from my knowledge of viral media that I hope will be useful and insightful just the same.
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Only 34 Percent of Americans View Twitter Favorably
A recent poll conducted by Langer Research Associates for ABC News/Washington Post measured the favorability of several large tech companies. The results of the poll demonstrated that only 34 percent of people view Twitter favorably, with 36 percent viewing it unfavorably, and 31 percent indicating that they have no opinion. The poll revealed that unlike Twitter, Google, Apple, and Facebook received positive sentiments.
Twitter is the second largest social network with around 500 million member (140 million active users) with 340 million tweets sent per day. There are people who love it, including myself. So, what’s with all the negativity about Twitter?
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Jonah Peretti, Founder of BuzzFeed—What Makes Something Go Viral?
Jonah Peretti is the founder of BuzzFeed and a co-founder of The Huffington Post. He does an excellent job in the video above (a part of an interview series produced by mediabistroTV) discussing viral content, what it is, and what it is exactly that makes something go viral.
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The Hunger Games: The Successful New Media Campaign That Made It Rain Ticket Sales
Fandango’s recent press release noted that the newly released film The Hunger Games has broken the record for ticket sales with its service, accounting for 22% of all ticket sales. Many of those sales were made with Fandango’s mobile app, resulting in a record number of tickets purchased with a mobile device as well. The success of the film, although much due to the popularity of the book series for which it is based on, is also the result of an incredible demonstration of new media marketing.
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