As traditional publishers struggle to find new business models centered on the iPad (s aapl) and other tablets, Mike McCue, the founder of Palo Alto, Calif.-based mobile media company, Flipboard, seems to have figured out a business model for his 20-person company. McCue wants to build tablet-oriented HTML5 experiences, which allow him to bring branded advertising into a new, interactive and personalized future.
The app, which launched in July 2010 amidst a lot of fanfare, critical acclaim and criticism, has been quietly figuring out its long-term game plan. The app uses a unique interface that marries magazine-like metaphors with multi-touch gestures, and displays links shared by your followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook. It’s one of my favorite apps, but I’ve always felt the company needs to embrace the world beyond the two social networking heavyweights: Twitter and Facebook.
RSS Everywhere
When McCue stopped by my office earlier this week, I put this question to him. He asked me to stay tuned. The company is looking to embrace RSS and other information sources. It’s not hard to imagine Flipboard showing content from Google Reader (s goog). Flipboard wants to make social sharing and social content curation easier for a deeper content experience, McCue said.
The keys to this future are two technologies: RSS and HTML5. “We think of RSS from the consumer’s eyes,” McCue explained. Flipboard wants to make it easy for folks to consume RSS-based content, but offer it in a manner that mainstream users will find palatable, he said.
In addition to RSS, the company is looking at HTML5 as part of its future. “We are going to be relying more and more on HTML5 going forward,” McCue said, pointing out that the company is soon going to be submitting HTML5 extensions to W3C that make it easier to use magazine style elements such as pull quotes and sub-heads.
HTML5 Framework, FlipPages
McCue, who in a past life worked for Netscape and later started TellMe Networks (sold to Microsoft (s msft) for $800 million), believes his flagship iPad application is merely the first step in his long-term vision of building a new kind of information company. Behind all the talk of content consumption, content sharing and content discovery is the core business model: a new kind of advertising network that combines the traditional magazine style branding with personalized experiences.
Today, the company that has raised $10.5 million from the likes of Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, is launching HTML5-based Flip Pages, which give web-content publishers a framework to offer iPad-ready experience. When content from a handful of media brands such as Bon Appetit, Lonely Planet and SB Nation is shared on Twitter or Facebook, Flipboard renders the page as a magazine-style reading experience. Flipboard is working with OMD, an advertising agency, and testing magazine-page sized brand advertising from advertisers such as Pepsi (s pep), Gatorade, Infiniti and Charity Water.
More Than Just an Ad Network
From the day Flipboard launched, I’ve often wondered what the company’s business model could be. For starters, the company could offer a SaaS-based service that would allow them to easily build Flipboard-styled iPad apps for a nominal fee.
For instance, a small publisher such as GigaOM could sign up for this service and create magazine-style subsections and cover page, pick and choose fonts and other such visual elements, and create a unique enough experience. Flipboard could submit the final app to the App store, but the marketing of the app is left to the publisher. Similarly, the company can quickly add support for other tablet devices such as Android-based (s goog) tablets or Palm’s WebOS (s hpq) based tablets, if they ever come to market.
Given that it costs tens of thousands of dollars to build an iPad app, for small publishers such as us, paying, say, $10,000 a year seems like a bargain. Now here’s the best part: The apps would carry the code for Flipboard to serve ads-from either its ad-network or on behalf of publishers for a fee. As it signsup high-quality, niche publishers, the company starts to develop big enough reach for its ad network.
If the company wants to go one step further, it should build Flipboard-powered web sites for publishers such as ourselves: a good way to build more momentum.
Of course the big question is, will publishers bite? I will, for sure. After all, what’s good for Oprah is good for me. Apparently, Oprah wanted Flipboard to build an app for her.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
Check out PadPressed.com – You can instantly turn your WordPress blog into an iPad ready browser based Flipboard style magazine.
“And if the company wants to go one step further – it should build Flipboard-powered web sites for publishers such as ourselves – a good way to build more momentum.”
There is a already a web-based Flipboard type wordpress plugin that does this already…
http://www.padpressed.com
This is all great news.
It first seemed flipboard wanted to choke existing publisher ads.
Secondly – flipboard is predicated on the assumption that the media industry doesn’t create a pay-wall garden around their content – which typically gets shared.
Which would then reduce the content to just user-generated social media and blogs stuff.
Flipboard is way over-rated IMO. I bought it and liked the idea of it but it basically doesn’t work outside of the USA, and outside of some very narrow news requirements. If your idea of “news” is USA today, then Flipboard is great.
Also, if you have zillions of Facebook friends and twitter followers, then the Social component also works well. Otherwise …. it hardly works at all.
The news that they are going to monetise the thing with advertisements is neither good, nor something that would make me go back to using it.
agreed.
I don’t know Om. From a personalization or context point of view, these apps seem to be the equivalent of Yahoo’s bookmark list or at the most, of people organized categories in directory style format also know as portals.
But like portals they don’t take advantage of a computers power or the network like search provided for “personalized” directory lookups. We know the end of that story.
In other words we are just seeing the beginning of personalized organized content. This doesn’t seem to provide the equivalent of search technology, this seems to be more about display, i.e. portal. On the other hand portals were a nice business for a time.
Forget the iPad app. You guys need a mobile version of your site that works well on all smartphones and all tablets. Gigaom is one of the few tech sites around that doesn’t have a touch friendly UI.
Pulse is already better than Flipboard at bringing in content from facebook, twitter and RSS. They’re also on iPhone and Android too. It’s a full experience – is this seriously what Flipboard has been working on for the last four months. As a user, I feel let down.
Really? Well, if you can find 10 companies that will sign up for that $10,000 per year custom magazine service, I}ll deliver the beta tomorrow! And, it is all application-based, and the templates and interactions are customizable. In fact, we have built apps based on this technology. All of the apps in the iTMS are the exactly same application with different feed templates and internal data configurations.
I’d love a good reason to get this going again! Sadly we focused on music! With Apple… Sigh. The goal was to import the assets of 100,000 applications, and automatically build 100,000 template-based media applications. The goal was also to provide web tools for smaller companies to customize the apps. And yes, we can automatically build applications if Apple will ever allow it.
We built this nearly two years ago…
Certainly the future of HTML4 is HTML5.
Not sure what you mean by the title. As for Flash… Flash is way ahead in every way (Including a good way to animate). Point!
In the print world we’ve had great, generic publishing tools (Quark, InDesign, Photoshop). Was hoping by now we’d have something similar for robust digital publishing whether web or mobile platforms/apps. Yes, we have fairly robust CMSs but beyond a simple blog layout (template) they take a staff of geeks to configure.
Whomever develops a good, robust, flexible system this will own the publishing tool market for decades in my estimation.
Correction who ever can supply this at a cost that more people than just the large corporations can afford, will own the publishing tool market for decades..
I agree. Generic publishing tools are desperately needed in this area. I am sure Adobe and some others are probably working on it as we speak.
I really hope that Apple comes out with streamlined iPad creation and submission tools that even small publishers can afford. Publishing would explode on the iPad just like it did with desktop publishing when the Mac and PageMaker came out.
I recently sold my iPad in favor of the new MacBook Air 11″ and the main reason was I have been disappointed with the rate of quality apps and publications made specifically for iPad.
I know it is early in the game for this stuff and I plan to get another iPad when the second gen version comes out as I miss it already, but I think quality publishing tools for the masses will help make the iPad a more compelling device.
Not sure Adobe will be in the game – They’ve seemed too focused on Flash. If they could take InDesign and expand it maybe. My bet is more on Apple – They have all the pro tools for photog, audio, video and the expertise to do it – On the other hand, they are mainly focused on consumer level, mass volume.
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All the current solutions are too vertically focused and not really that robust – Need someone with a grand vision.
Great article. Flipboard wants to do to the magazine industry what Apple did to the Music industry. But they still have to prove that the metaphor that they have created is something that user will really adopt (beyond the first cool flip effect). Despite being aggressively pushed by Apple, the iTunes ranking of the App is not that high yet. The next couple of years are going to be interesting.
As long as the medium (Flipboard) is the message there is no future for peer to peer conversations. We need Yahoo pipes in a much more palatable avatar. Basically we need double blind processing of content. Here again the problem is that should the sheeple get content that goes through their system easily or should they get the TRUTH that can disturb a lot of stuff around them