New Notes Let Curators Add Original Content To Magazines

Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, introduces a new set of features aimed at fostering conversation around the content people share on its platform. Now, people on Flipboard can add original content to their Magazines to ask a question, welcome new followers or share a photo. With a new “create” icon, available on every page of their Magazines, curators can write short notes to their followers. This marks a shift in emphasis towards community and conversations around shared interests on Flipboard.

With a distinctive sapphire-colored background, notes are new content units that can be shared and surfaced across the platform. These new note designs premiere on the web today and will be available on iOS and Android in January. The responsive layout of a note reveals when conversations are happening by displaying replies to that note. It’s possible to @mention other users when writing a note or comment. Users receive notifications when they are mentioned, and when others comment on items that you have commented on previously.

“When we started developing these features, we could not have imagined how timely their introduction would be. Adding the ability to have conversations within a Magazine is an important step towards our vision to let people connect with others around shared interests,” said Mike McCue, CEO and co-founder of Flipboard. “Flipboard is a ‘content first’ social platform, where social engagement and conversations are around a story or topic; a small distinction that results in a very different community experience from traditional social media platforms.”

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Notes provide a powerful way to share ideas and spark conversations in Magazines, especially in Group Magazines, which are curated by multiple people. In that scenario every curator — owners and contributors — can add notes to the Group Magazine.

During a pilot, Flipboard’s new in-house community team experimented with notes in Group Magazines to build three key communities around the popular topics, food, travel and photography. The pilot kicked off in July, and social activity — defined as likes, comments, flips and shares — saw a 40 percent increase from August to September, and a 28 percent increase in October compared to September.

The Group Magazines that were in the pilot are The Recipe Exchange, The Travel Exchange and The Photography Exchange. This summer the team started to invite top curators to join them as contributors. Prominent food content creators, such as Bobby Berk, Anela Malik, Kevin Curry, Nik Sharma and Maurizio Leo, are now participating as contributors to the The Recipe Exchange, adding recipes, stories, photos and notes. That Magazine currently has 70 contributors, who have collectively added 5,600 food related stories; there are 28K followers who have generated 1.6 million page flips.

In addition to the three Flipboard-run communities, the team collaborated with a handful of curators to start their own Group Magazines as places for community. Examples include Photowalkers by Jefferson Graham, Hiking the World by Kym Tyson of 33andFree, and The Breadship by Maurizio Leo. As the conversations features roll out, the team expects new and existing Group Magazines to transform into communities with active conversations around shared interests.

Moreover, a new Community tab inside the app, prominently placed next to each user’s For You Feed, features the best Magazines, Storyboards and curators every day, making it easy for users to discover, follow or join them.

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