Flipboard: Keeping Up on the Latest News

Mashable recently called Flipboard the sleeping giant ofinternet news.  The platform is not new in terms of cyberspace, having been around since 2010, but it is gaining more users every month due to its ease of use and ability to present news in an accurate and easy to read fashion.  Unlike other social media outlets, Flipboard is more of an early Web 2.0 site in the sense that it is a news aggregator and less of a personal sharing site.  With Flipboard, you have a collection of newsfeeds that you can review and customize to your own tastes, all in a magazine format.  You can then create your own online magazines that can be private, shared, or public.

To get started, you can either sign up for a free account or log on with an existing social media account, such as Facebook or Twitter.  This can be done either on the Flipboardwebsite or by downloading the Flipboard app for your device’s app store.  Once logged on, you then start to select the type of news you wish to view by clicking on the What’s Your Passion link at the top.  You get a list of popular topics with an idea of how many people are reading them.  You may also search for a topic if one you want to view is not listed in the popular list.  Once you click on a topic, you can then personalize it by picking the sub-topics you wish to see.  Once you have done this, the topic appears on your home tab at the top of the page.  The next time you log on, you just need to click that topic to see the latest news in the sub-topics you selected.  For example, if you select sports as a topic, you can then select specific sports as the sub-topics.  Or you might pick recipes and then slow cooker recipes, Italian, and Mexican as sub-topics.  In addition to the topics you select for your home bar, you will see a category called For You, which is sort of a digest or highlights of all the topics you selected.  Here you will find something called Daily Edition, which features the cover stories for all of your topics, so if you are in a hurry or just want a quick update, this is the section to turn to first.

Keep in mind that you are limited to ten items on your home bar so it is a good idea to choose widely when setting up your topics and be more selective in your sub-topics.  It is best to choose a broader topic for your home bar for the stuff you want to follow the most, then narrow it in your sub-topics.  For example, you could pick news and then select sub-topics for weather, sports, politics, or entertainment to cover more topics.  If, however, you are a big sports fan, you may want to make that its own topic on your home bar with baseball, football and hockey, for example, as your sub-topics.  The home bar should be where you put the things that matter the most to you and using the broader topics helps you to have more at your fingertips.  Once you click on the broader topic on your home bar, you will then see the sub-topics you selected listed on that page, so you can use those links to jump to news about a specific topic.

The topics all have a set of three dots (…) after their title.  Clicking the dots will allow you to add the topic to your home bar or, if it is already there, personalize it or remove it.  If you want to select or de-select sub-topics, click personalize to get the list of featured topics and the search box; just click to add or remove a sub-topic.

Navigating the articles is pretty simple and is set-up for easy clipping or sharing.  Each article has a set of three icons that show up if you scroll in the upper-right-hand corner – the plus, heart, and envelope.  If you click the plus icon, you can flip the article into a magazine you can keep for yourself or share with friends or the public (more on that in a minute).  The heart is the “like” button on Flipboard and is simply a way to express approval of the content.  Flipboard tends to cull items that match what the readers like, so if you want to see more articles like one you just read, hit the heart to start getting more in your feeds.  The envelope is the sharing option, you can either enter an email address or start typing a name to share on Facebook or Twitter if you have linked your Flipboard account to one of those services.  You can also copy the URL provided to use as a link if you prefer to send an email or do a post on your own.

Finally, we have the personal magazines you can create and share.  If you click on your account icon in the upper-right-hand part of the page, you will get to your account page.  Here is where you can enter some personal information about yourself if you wish.  You will also see the topics you have added to your home bar, as well as some topics you may have looked at recently but have not added to your home bar.  Note that at any time you can use the search icon, the magnifying glass, to search for a topic even if you do not want to add it to the topics you are following regularly.  The other items on this page are your magazines and magazines you are following.  A magazine is basically a collection of articles a user “clips” by clicking on the plus to Flip the article.  Under magazines, you will see the magazines you have created or you can create a new one by clicking on the create magazine option.  The name you give the magazine depends on what you plan to do with the magazine.  If you will keep it private or just share with a few friends, then you can give it a name that makes sense to you, like favorite bands, upcoming movies, or recipes to try.  If you wish to share publicly, think of a name that might attract other users to the content.  The privacy setting is simple, either select anyone can view or only you and the people you invite to contribute can view.  You can give the magazine a description if you want.  Lastly, the option to share the magazine is there if you want to give select people access.  This sharing link also allows them to contribute articles so it is a good way to do group research or, if you have common interest with friends or family, to easily share articles with one another.  All you need to do to add an article is click the plus and select the magazine from your list.  You will also see the Flipboard icon on many news sites and can use it to flip an article you see into one of your magazines.  At any point, you can return to the magazines page, click on the edit button that shows up when you scroll down toward the button of the cover page, and change any of these settings or delete the magazine.  You can also edit the stories that appear in the magazine if you wish to delete content.  Lastly, there is an analytics section under edit that lets you see the activity taking place in the magazine.

As you are searching the site, you will see other magazines. What makes these stand out versus the regular topics is they will have a follow button near the top.  Click follow to add it to your list and it will show up under the Following tab on your account page.  Articles will also show up in your Daily Edition.  You can unfollow by going to the magazine’s page (just click on it from your following list) and click the follow button again to drop it from your list.

If you get stuck, one of Flipboard’s own magazines is what it calls the user guide.  This magazine is full of articles featuring how-tos, tips, and news about new features to try out.  There is also a standard style helpcenter that is really great if you are just getting started and want to get the basics down first.

- Laura, Information Technology