Twitter read on the iPad with Flipboard is similar to reading a personalized magazine.
In the ongoing search for the ultimate tablet reading experience, Flipboard has received a lot of press since launching a few days ago. Backed up by an euphoric Robert Scoble, interest for the new iPad app even became too high in the first couple of days resulting in some obvious scalability and reliability problems as more and more reviews surfaced of the new app.
So, is this the tablet reader app we have been waiting for and is it a true game changer?
Well, it´s not the “does it all” HTML5 web app I think will ultimately win on a more mature market and it is apparent that Flipboard (at least for the moment) has a very strong Apple focus with a proprietary app as a top priority which is a pity. In my personal opinion, Flipboard also focuses on a too reactive, “read only” narrow integration with social networks Twitter and Facebook rather than takes a position as a more interactive/read and write tool which I personally would have liked to see in this kind of application.
Where it shines however, is in the reading experience. Actually, it shines so well here that in spite of all the other flaws, this makes it a magnificent application still. Reading Twitter and Facebook as a real-time, personalized, social magazine with a very intuitive user interface is indeed a joy and quite far from the boring and sterile “all content is equal” column interfaces of Tweetdeck, Seesmic, Hootsuite, etc. we have become used to.
The caching of web pages in the background for “Read on Web” is also a smart feature making the web connection seem more seamless with the app itself. However, the respect for copyright of the original content provider does not seem to be implemented in the technical solution right now but hopefully Flipboard will change this to use public RSS-feeds of sources instead.
See the screenshot above to get a feel for how a Twitter feed looks like in Flipboard or, even better if you have an iPad and can go for the full experience, download and try the free app because it really shows what can be done with the user interface of the iPad.
Waiting for another great application in this field, I noticed Feedly will be ready for the iPad in September/October. Hopefully, that one will be worth the wait.
What reader applications out there do you think one should keep an extra eye on and what are your opinions of Flipboard?
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