The Newsroom

Flipboard™, Smaller And Smarter, Launches On iPhone

Introduces Cover Stories: A Single Place to Find Interesting News and Social Updates Happening Right Now
December 7th, 2011  •  Palo Alto, CA

Today, Flipboard™, the popular social magazine created for Apple’s® iPad®, launches on iPhone®. Inspired by the beauty of print and the simple action of flipping pages, Flipboard gives readers one place to enjoy the stories, photos, news and updates being shared across social networks. And now, re-designed for when and where people use the phone, Flipboard for iPhone takes this a step further with a fast, beautiful interface and Cover Stories, a brand new feature debuting with Flipboard for iPhone. The first public demo of Flipboard for iPhone will take place at the LeWeb’11 Conference in Paris, France at 11:55 a.m. CET.

“The iPad is an amazing device that challenged us to rethink how people discover and share social updates and news. With the iPhone we redesigned Flipboard for those times during the day when you’ve only got a few minutes to check in, when people want to find the things they care about even faster,” said Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard. “Flipboard for iPhone has been our number one request and now this release finally puts all the power of Flipboard in your pocket.”

Moving closer to its vision for creating a single place to discover and enjoy the growing amount of content being shared across social networks, Flipboard for iPhone introduces Cover Stories. Cover Stories is a smart section that learns from a reader’s interactions with the content, created for when people want to quickly check for interesting news or updates. The new Cover Stories gives readers one place to catch up on some of the most interesting news, updates and photos being shared at that moment.

With Flipboard connected to social networks like Facebook and Instagram, updates and photos from close friends will show up in your Cover Stories. If, for example, Design, Tech or Travel are on your Flipboard, the most shared stories in those sections will be surfaced in Cover Stories as well.

While readers of Flipboard on iPad flip through magazine-like pages of content, the iPhone experience uses a vertical flip so readers can enjoy Flipboard while they are holding their phone in one hand. Using a simple thumb-swipe up, readers can quickly flip through lots of content and if something looks interesting, just tap to slide the story open and swipe back to return to where they left off. It’s a “stack” of stories, posts and images that are beautifully rendered with various layouts and style guides. And every page shows the original tweet and lets you quickly like, favorite or re-tweet back to your community.

Flipboard for iPhone Highlights

  • Social Networks: Enjoy everything in one place from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, Google Reader, Flickr and 500px.
  • Cover Stories: Get a quick update on interesting stories and photos from all your social networks and favorite Flipboard content.
  • Flipboard Accounts: Access to all the favorite content and social networks you saved on the iPad edition of Flipboard with a Flipboard Account.
  • Content Guide: Browse recommended reading. Use + to add to your Flipboard.
  • Search Bar: Find social conversations, posts and feeds from any person or publication and on any topic. For example, search “Cinemagraph” and get results from Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, RSS and Instagram.
  • Share Everywhere: Just one tap to share, like or comment to add to the conversation on the social network an item was posted to.
  • Fast Flip: Scan through pages as quickly as you can with just a flick of a thumb.
  • Read later: Use Instapaper or Read It Later to mark stories you want to save.