Integration and personalization are two of today’s most overused buzzwords in the tech world, especially when it comes to mobile applications, which, of course, include a wide variety of Android apps. In some cases, integration and personalization are nothing more than empty vessels with little to no actual content to back up their claims with, but fortunately, this scenario is rather the exception than the rule. Integration and personalization are at their highest priority when the issue at hand is digital content consumption. You need integration because you don’t want to waste away your Android phone’s storage space with dozens of apps and you also want to avoid having to open multiple apps to get access to the content you can’t wait to consume. You need personalization because you don’t want to be bombarded with superfluous content that is of little interest to you, and you’re also striving to be up-to-date on the latest trends and breaking news of the industry you’re working in. Flipboard brings you the best – and brings out the best – of both buzzwords, and lets you create your own personal magazine from an information-laden concoction of topics, magazines, interesting people, and social media posts.
After you’ve installed Flipboard on your Android phone, the first not-so-complicated task you will face is setting up a Flipboard account, which you can do the traditional way (i.e. registering with an email address), but it is much easier to just sign in with Facebook, which will also link your Facebook account to Flipboard, but more on that later. The next step is handpicking the topics you deem must-follows from a selection of broader topics that includes Photography, Movies, Technology, Travel, Sports, News, and many more. When you’re done, it’s time to start flipping that board!
Within the aforementioned broader topics, Flipboard delivers a multifarious assortment of relevant articles and news stories, ensuring that everyone will find the content that makes them literally click. Name what you like, and Flipboard is sure to find you dozens of personalities, topics, and magazines to follow, whether you’re interested in LEGO, LeBron James, mobile development, or home decorating.
The fact that you can follow other people and see the content they have added to their personal magazine and reflip their flips adds another layer of diversity to Flipboard. Apropos personal magazine: to create your own, just click on the “+” button, and select a category to flip the article at hand into. If you have no intention to share the content with fellow Flipboarders, just keep it sneaky and file it under “Read Later” – believe us, no one will know or see.
As we’ve mentioned in the initial paragraph, signing in with Facebook automatically links your Facebook account to Flipboard, allowing you to scour your news feed, monitor the photos you’ve been tagged in, see the latest content posted by the pages you’ve liked, and check out what’s going on in the groups that you’re a member of. But there worlds beyond Facebook, and accordingly, Flipboard lets you link several accounts to your Flipboard identity, including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Flickr, Tumblr, YouTube, SoundCloud, and even your subscriptions to prestigious magazines such as The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Financial Times.
Flipboard comes equipped with localized editions available in 24 countries, and on Android tablets, has a special feature called Content Guide with hundreds of staff-picked articles, photos, and curated sections dedicated to the news of the day and other hot topics.
Since Flipboard is a free app, it does contain ads, but they are not of the in-your-face variety, so no need to worry, they won’t disrupt either your Flipboard flow or your daily readings on the topics you can’t stop loving. As for the design, Flipboard is nothing to write home about, but this time around, take that as a positive, because unnecessarily flashy design elements would divert your attention away from what really matters – content, that is. Flipboard’s design does its job: it’s easy on the eyes, easy to understand, and easy to navigate.
The bottom line is that Flipboard is a must-have app for anyone that consumes vast amounts of digital content on a daily basis, and is looking for an entirely personalizable, multifaceted app tailor-made for not only indulging in the topics that interest them while weeding out the piles of unwanted content that permeates news feeds, but also for keeping themselves updated on what’s happening on social media – all this without the hassle of having to use multiple apps.
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