iPad App to Download: #Flipboard
This app came up last night in conversation, and I just saw someone post on it in my NewsFeed, sooooooooo it's totally being talked about ... sooooooo, you totally need to know about it.
Nerds, meet FlipBoard, your personalized social magazine
Per MediaPost Publications: A social news iPad app named Flipboard debuted this week to some serious buzz -- so much so that it partially disabled the startup's system. Now, however, Gizmodo and others are asking if the manner in which the app uses private publisher content is even legal. "Is Flipboard scraping content it doesn't have the rights to?" the tech blog asks. "Flipboard, the new iPad app that renders links from your Twitter feed and favorite sites in a beautiful, magazine-style layout, has a problem: it scrapes websites directly rather than using public RSS feeds, opening it to claims of copyright infringement."
Rather than rely on RSS feeds, Flipboard grabs URLs from Twitter and Facebook feeds. The problem is that RSS also allows content to be included in feeds, whereas Twitter provides only the URLs that link back to the full website. With similar services, "From a licensing and copyright perspective it's a little bit iffy, but since content providers get at least one pageview every time someone uses [such a service] there has been a sort of truce." Whether the popularity of Flipboard will cause publishers to reconsider the tentative "truce" remains an question.
I think this app has AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING potential!!! I tried downloading it last night on my friend's ipad, and alas - there were problems with the hotel wifi ... yada yada .... so, I haven't played with it just yet- but just think about how gnarly of an experience it would be just to enrich your twitter and facebook newsfeeds with something like this. It pulls about two paragraphs from each article and presents it in a much more engaging way. ADDED VALUE TO SOMETHING THAT ALREADY WORKS?!?!!?! Say it ain't so app developers!! Something we could actually USEEE!! YAYYY!!!!!! I think this sounds all shades of unapologetic awesomeness.
As far as the reposting and all that snazzy jazzy stuff is concerned who CARREESSSSSS!!!! I understand the need for uniques, and all that - however your content is getting THAT much more exposure?! Isn't that the bottom line anyway? How many more impressions are being made, how many more sales could that lead to yada yada yada. The only problem I do see with this is ad space. Would it pull the ads from the previous link? I doubt it - so, you're exposing that many more people to fresher content, that someone else has already paid to advertise on. BUT!!!! If you also think about it, they're really only paying to advertise on the PLATFORM and not the actual articles - so theoretically speaking in THAT regard, it should totally be kosher and be a separate negotiated rate. The web is an ENTIRELY different medium. There is no legality to cover technology that moves so quickly. It just doesn't work ... truce or no truce, grey area or not ... I TOTALLY can't wait to play with it.
Thanks a heap for the update Daniel! #NerdsUnite
and PS. my brain hurts, hahaha!
