These days, it’s so easy to get sucked into consuming content that aligns with your own opinions. For example, one of my favorite news apps is the BBC’s. It has a great layout and a wide range of news categories. You can even customize the topics you see in your news feed, which is great for getting content related to your areas of interest.
The only problem is that all the news comes from a single provider and therefore from a single perspective. Some people may not see this as a problem, but I’ve been thinking lately that I want to expand my understanding, especially on unfamiliar topics.
Google News and Inoreader are good options, but my personal new favorite is Flipboard. This social magazine allows you to choose from thousands of topics before selecting the best stories based on your interests. You can also create your own magazine with curated stories and share them with others.
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This is part of a regular series of articles about the apps we couldn’t live without. Read them all here.
To understand why I love Flipboard so much, I have to take you back to my 15-year-old self. My biggest interest back then was movies, and having an unlimited movie ticket allowed me to indulge my cinema cravings. Watching the latest blockbusters and alternative indie offerings was only half the fun, though. I also loved reading about how movies were made and what new releases were coming out soon, which I was able to do thanks to the magazine. Rich.
As each monthly issue made its way through the mail system, I always waited with anticipation to get my hands on the magazine. There was something special about receiving a physical product and flipping through the pages. I enjoyed the whole process and much of that came from the format.
25 years later, there are still printed magazines available to buy, including RichMost people engage with content digitally, myself included. It’s impossible to replicate the same experience with a digital magazine, but Flipboard has tried pretty well.
To mimic page turning, Flipboard uses a page-turning animation to move between pages of headlines. It’s pretty basic, but still better than the endless scrolling you often see on social media feeds. There is a scroll mode, but I prefer the page-turning option. My only gripe is that page turning is vertical, not horizontal. The latter is the default implementation for almost all magazines, so it’s confusing that Flipboard has opted for something different.
Newsfeeds are populated by first selecting a number of topics, curators and magazines to follow. Flipboard offers a wide range of options but I chose UK News, English Football, Photography and Technology. This gave me a good choice of topic types and represented the news that interested me most. It is possible to refresh these topics at any time so if the results aren’t suitable for you just select some new topics.
In addition to your personalized news feed, you can also discover more content through the Discover tab. Here you can browse by category and dive into magazines. I especially like the Community tab, where you can browse selected curators and discover new content. You may find certain curators that you want to return to again and again, and this is one of Flipboard’s most powerful features. It doesn’t just consist of the news that Flipboard wants to show you; you can also get independently curated content.
When it comes to reading the content, one of the best things about Flipboard is the Reader View. It makes the text white and overlays it on a black background, making it much easier to read. It also removes all the menus that are visible in the web version and removes all the annoying ads, making the experience much more pleasant than just reading a bunch of web articles.
Flipboard is an innovative alternative to experiencing news content. By focusing the reading experience on page-flipping and magazine curation, the developers have created an app that stands out from almost all other news apps. Since it’s free, why not give it a try and see if it changes your news reading experience?
Download the Flipboard app on iOS or Android
