Flipboard Review

Social media is everywhere. You can't go more than a minute surfing the web without finding a link to add something to your RSS feed, Digging an article you like, or checking your Facebook or Twitter feeds. Many apps have tried to combine all these into a single interface, but most have failed to truly captivate. Enter Flipboard: You've never seen anything like it, and a few launch hiccups aside, it's a breakthrough application.

Keeping up with all your favorite blogs, news sources, and friends is tough. If you're not careful, it can eat a significant chunk out of your day. Wouldn't it be nice if there were an algorithm that could pull out the most important things and display them all in one place? Through all sorts of technological magic, Flipboard does just that. It tosses aside the conventional RSS feed, Facebook wall, and Twitter application in favor of a unified approach that resembles the very best digital magazines out there.

Aside from a handful of carefully combed over sources by the Flipboard team, the most important articles and updates to you will come from your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The app intelligently sorts through the potentially hundreds of updates you receive each day and delivers the cream of the crop. How does it do it? Media-rich, popular posts and stories are sure to make it to the top. Beyond that, we aren't ones to question what simply works.

You're given nine slots to fill (additional slots would be nice, and we wouldn't be surprised if more are added in future updates). Your best option is to add Twitter lists that compile tweets talking about similar topics (such as the iPad). Your personal Facebook and Twitter accounts are also supremely useful, if you're following the right people.

By that, we mean that if you're only following close friends on Twitter, you may not get a bevvy of pertinent results, unless those friends frequently share cool links and images with you. As it forgoes RSS feeds to supply you with news, your best bet is to follow those same publications on Twitter. Follow @wired, for instance, to get all the latest Wired articles imported into Flipboard.

Choose one of the nine slots and enter into what looks like a section of a magazine. Flip pages (with a gorgeous page-flipping animation) to access additional stories and updates. Those that are receiving a lot of likes or comments will be granted larger screen space. You can add your own comments, retweet, and the like from the stories themselves. If they are short, opening a particular story or post will display the entire thing (images and video included); if they are long, you may have to pull up a web page view, but that's done with the built-in browser, and the transition is seamless.

Consider Flipboard to be the Readers' Digest version of your social media. It's not going to display everything, but it has a sneaky way of detecting what's going to interest you most. In fact, after giving it a few days to learn its way around my feeds and cache the important items, I find little need to actual pull up Facebook or Twitter unless I want to post something myself.

The lack of ability to post might be a turnoff to some, but you have to keep in mind that this is meant to be a a social media magazine, not a substitute for the services themselves. It's more about content consumption than creation.

Viewed in this light, it's a revelation. It loads quickly, it picks the best stuff out of the pack, it looks amazing, and it leaves me feeling like I'm enjoying a magazine rather than reading through a laundry list of everything out there (a la Google Reader).

Considering that it's free and will only get better with age, this is simply something you must try. Let it grow on you. Learn how to use it, and it will keep you entertained in a way that will leave you with spare time at the end of the day. And considering it's only on the iPad, it's a terrific response to give when people ask what's so special about the iPad. It's this sort of thing that the iPad was made for.