Flipboard App – 2010 iPad App of the Year

Apple recently announced on its iTunes website the most downloaded iPad apps for the year 2010, with categories ranging from music, movies, tv shows, audiobooks, podcasts and applications. Flipboard gained the top-most spot and received the title of “ best iPad app of the year”. Flipboard is a free iPad app that was launched on July 21, 2010 in Apple’s iPad apps store. The Flipboard app presents Twitter links and Facebook media streams which are presented like articles in a magazine and now it also supports Google Reader and Flickr, among others.

Flipboard is the brainchild of Mike McCue, former CEO of Tellme, Evan Doll, and former senior iPhone engineer at Apple. According to Flipboard’s official website, it is an iPad app that visualizes news, stories, photos, and updates shared across Twitter and Facebook like pages of a magazine which you can flip through. In short, it is a magazine created from a user’s social content.

A panel of pictures that represents your Facebook or Twitter links has a headline and few paragraphs about the story that can be clicked to open up the entire article. A quick swipe across the screen will turn the page into the next article. Users can make a quick decision whether to read about stories being passed around by their friends just by viewing and judging their previews. They will be greeted by a set of pictures instead of the usual links or news streams. You will instantly see the images, stories, and comments so you no longer have to scan long lists of posts and click on so many links. This makes browsing through your friend’s Facebook or Twitter account faster and even more entertaining because of this new way of viewing social content. The recent acquisition of Ellerdale will vastly improve Flipboard’s ability to feature new and hot content across a variety of social networks.

Flipboard can be personalized further by letting readers create sections on things that interest them or people that interest them. It also comes with built in content from third-party providers such as those featured in the “FlipTech” section of TechCrunch, and other tech articles in Private Equity Hub, and Venturebeat.

The other iPad apps of the year that are included are Pages, Numbers, Keynote, LogMeIn Ignition, Scrabble for iPad, Documents to Go, Angry Birds, Real Racing, Plants vs. Zombies, and Proloquo2Go. With all the other apps that Flipboard is competing against, it is no small feat to be named iPad app of the year. Additional funding from investors for Flipboard will further improve services and other developments.

Popularity: 14% [?]