Flipboard originated as the result of a thought exercise: What if the web browser disappeared? What emerged was a nicely designed, interactive, real time and content rich digital magazine/aggregator.
But… will Flipboard be able stay focused on this or are they destined to become more and more distracted by how to monetize it? They have approx $10 million in VC money (one year worth) and they need to figure out how they are going to monetize it before they run out.
As much as I seemed concerned about this potential monetization problem leading to a major disruption of the experience that they set out to offer, they didn’t (or at least they didn’t talk about it much)…
They were focused on hyping the app and the current and future functionality. They didn’t want to talk a lot about monetization, they wanted to talk about design, innovating with real time content and continuing to integrate cool social apps like Instagram into Flipboard. (Note: check out Instagram Japan Earthquake posts on Flipboard – very interesting how photos were used to post messages to people of Japan).
They said quite clearly that they hope that more development like this will lead to another $10m investor or some unique model for monetizing this app and that was it for $$$ talk.
While I have no problem with the idea of a life full of R&D, I am excited of the promise of digital editorial content and Apps like this emerging and I just hope to hell that while everyone is focused on making this already cool App even cooler, they don’t suddenly say ‘Oops, we ran out of money while we were busy innovating and it looks like we are going to have to sell some advertising’…
While ‘real time’ is what differentiates this from print, the ‘design and experience’ is what differentiates it from other online magazines and aggregators… I would hate to see this go away.
I, for one, am inspired by… the ‘concept’ of simple, beautiful and real time content design.
Darren is CM’s Executive Creative Director, usually in our Calgary office but currently down in Austin leading our contingent of attendees.
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Chrissie
