"Flipboard hasn’t worked out a business model yet"
From what I saw of Flipboard, it looks very nice. But these numbers seem pretty high for an iPad app.
Inherently, an app/service like this doesn't have any network effect, any "virality" besides literal word-of-mouth (you using it doesn't make me know you're using it, unlike services like Twitpic let's say: when you post a picture, it makes me aware of Twitpic) and can be replaced instantly without me losing anything.
Again, the app looks great and it got a fantastic start. But I'm curious how it will pan out in the coming months.
Obviously, iPad may not be the only platform, it seems good enough of a prototype to get Kleiner Perkins attention (remember they've allocated a few hundred mil for iPhone + iPad apps?). I wouldn't be shocked if they've already partnered with Nook and Kindle.
Same here. The first couple of days it was out I used it a lot - especially the HN feed. However, I realized I missed the comments and I switched back using HN via the web.
Also, the endless "RT by @blahblah" list of users on the right column for each story is basically useless clutter.
I use Read Later instead of instapaper, same thing, I just like the FF plugin it offers:
Isn't this essentially scrapping content from other web sites with out their permission, removing all the ads, and then presenting them in a nice way. I always assumed this was not allowed?
Quote from the article:
"...what the company is doing might not be legal, since its software works by “scraping” content from other Web sites. But McCue insists there is no problem because Flipboard displays only a small part of an article, not the entire thing, and then embeds a link that takes a reader to the original."
But I'm not sure if this is true. Scraping is scraping, regardless whether or not you link to it.
In the last paragraph you can find this though "Flipboard hasn’t worked out a business model yet, but plans to put ads next to articles and then share some advertising revenue with publishers." Which indicates they do acknowledge the publishers for the content and want to share (potential) revenues with those publishers.
I would add Facebook, which is more around the same model as Flipboard in that context: when you share a link on Facebook, it grabs the content to present a nice snippet with a picture, title and summary.
Even though, users may tweet a link, they are not the owner of the content of those links.
IANAL, but I have a feeling, its NOT OK (both legally and ethically) for a commercial to redistribute the content (without taking prior permission/licensing, that is), deviating the original creators from revenue/traffic et al.
Article explains how they only redistribute teaser text and and that reaction from media companies has been positive— they all want to get in on Flipboards's recommendation engine.
I got my iPad over the weekend. And this was one of the first apps I installed. So far I have been loving it. Currently you can only have 9 sources. Maybe they will charge for having more than 9 sources or maybe they are trying to keep the ui nice and simple, since Evan Doll is a former apple employee and instructor for the iPhone classes at Stanford.
For beta users you can... I installed Flipboard about 2 weeks ago and have been able to use Twitter and Facebook for about a week. They seem to be letting people in to use Twitter and Facebook at a pretty fast clip.
"Flipboard has raised $10.5 million"
"Flipboard hasn’t worked out a business model yet"
From what I saw of Flipboard, it looks very nice. But these numbers seem pretty high for an iPad app.
Inherently, an app/service like this doesn't have any network effect, any "virality" besides literal word-of-mouth (you using it doesn't make me know you're using it, unlike services like Twitpic let's say: when you post a picture, it makes me aware of Twitpic) and can be replaced instantly without me losing anything.
Again, the app looks great and it got a fantastic start. But I'm curious how it will pan out in the coming months.