Here is a prediction: It might not be called Flipboard- but the Flipboard experience will become a format for publishing content, just like today content producers publish content in PDF, Word documents, video embeds, etc.

This weekend here in the Bay area was nothing special thanks to all the rain. We certainly need it so the rain was welcomed and did stay away from most of the Neil Young Bridge School Benefit on Saturday which was nice since that was the only outside plans i had. So Sunday was a perfect day to sit on the couch (when the baby was napping) and spend some quality time with the iPad. Flipboard continues to be my favorite and most used App on my iPad (that is my own usage otherwise it is Angry Birds and Peek-a-boo Barn- you decided which one is addicted to what ;-)

I really enjoy the experience of using Flipboard- if you haven't had the pleasure i have embedded a well done video that will show you the general idea of how Flipboard works. The idea is that Flipboard becomes a living changing social magazine- of things that you are interested in and your network is pushing to you. The content of course is only as good as the 'feeds' you add/follow, and the network you currently follow on twitter and facebook- but the interaction with the content is just beautiful.

Aside from the interaction with the content being visually stimulating, i think it is the alignment with how i enjoy and productively consume content- yes many times i still print out things to read because on a flat screen i have troubles consuming it, the Flipboard experience i think changes that.

Now applications like CoverPad who has a new add-on for Wordpress are coming out with tools to make your content act like Flipboard which i think will lead to other tools that will easily allow content produces to provide a Flipboard like experience for their content consumers.

Imagine a user using a tablet with touch screen visits:

• your corporate website, they quickly flip through your product offerings, customer stories etc.
• your employees visit your corporate intranet and flip through articles from corporate (video included), HR announcements, sales wins, product brochures, proposals etc. (how cool would a SharePoint add-on be??)
  
• your customers visit your retail store, (e.g. REI, Nordstroms) and flip through your catalogs.
• Your daily newsletters (internal and external) are sent out and the content consumers interact with them by flipping through current and past 'issues'
• Any many other ways....

Content creation will need to be richer on the production side so producers need to think about that, just like Instapaper and other "read it later" services i believe will change the way online content is written.



Some of you may say, hey Daniela isn't this something the Client Solutions group at Dow Jones can do? Well yes, i sent a note out to corporate a couple weeks back and heard crickets- but we have a lot going on so i need to re-ping. Plus the way we work best (and fast) is to have a client who wants/needs. So i need to find a good use case that we can test this on!

Reflections of a Newsosaur just posted some results from a recent poll that found that newspaper website visitors appear to be early and passionate technology adopters. I am not surprised. Being in the online news business for the last ten years, i can tell you that the users who push us to deliver the most innovations in how they consume content through their enterprise applications are the same ones that favor consumer online news sites.

"In a survey of visitors to the websites of three newspapers in mid-sized communities far from the tech hubs on either coast, Harmon found that 30% of site visitors already have smart phones and that 25% of them are thinking about acquiring one. By contrast, the Nielsen Co. last summer said national smart-phone penetration was barely 17% while Harmon found it to be 25% among news-site visitors.

With about two weeks to go before the iPad ships on April 3, researcher Harmon said a “stunning” 30% of visitors to newspaper sites are considering the purchase of the latest Apple confection in addition to the 6% of respondents who already bought Kindles or another early e-reader."

He ends the post with:

"If newspapers fail to produce appealing cross-media content for the emerging tablet and smart-phone platforms, they will lose what’s left of their readers and advertisers to the competitors who do."

So a couple weeks back i was glad to see that The Wall Street Journal like the New York Times is working on an iPad application and have an " iPad hidden from public view, chained to tables in windowless rooms"so they can test it out (would love to come across that room as i roam the hallways!). But of course Rupert loves the iPad, so maybe we will all get an end of fiscal year "iGift". [wishful thinking ~]

Image|Flickr|Rinkel80