Flipboard and the end of "sourciness"

Flipboard and the end of "sourciness"

Flipboard's focus is on the content. Sources and platforms take a backseat.

by Jenn Webb | @JennWebb | +Jenn Webb | Comment | 10 March 2011

Today's Flipboard update sports increased speed, an improved design layout, a partnership with Instagram, and the ability for users to search across several social platforms, including Flickr, Twitter and Facebook.

The shiny new features are drawing plenty of attention, but the really cool thing here — and what likely will fuel Flipboard's success — is the platform's ability to seamlessly present the newly integrated social content without overly focusing on the original source or platform.

In a recent interview, Craig Mod, designer and publisher at Flipboard, stressed the importance of putting the content first. By making content the focus of the presentation, users can experience a seamless stream of information rather than jumping from platform to platform:

I think the thing that Flipboard is doing particularly well is that the integrations become seamless. One of the main goals at Flipboard that we really try to drive home is that [users] plug in these [integration] sources and we remove the "sourciness" from it.

When I'm reading stuff in Flipboard, it's not like I'm engaging Twitter or engaging Facebook. I'm just aware of the great content that's being micro-curated by my social groups. There's an obfuscation of that social network layer — what we're building is a comfortable consumption layer, as fed by human curation.

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In the interview, Mod also discusses the most important elements of app design and how Flipboard is, at this point, a great big experiment. The full interview is available in the following video: