Flipboard and the rise of the adaptive page

This week saw the launch of Flipboard and it is currently riding high as the number 1 free app on the iTunes store as of today, despite only being available for the iPad. Flipboard is an app that allows content to be displayed for a user in a magazine style format for the internet, with nicely integrated social streams to see the best of content across the social web. The interesting thing for me behind Flipboard, is the vision of how it can be used for content discovery, with integrated behavioural learning, so that content is ranked on the basis of it’s likely importance to you. For example tweets and posts from those that you converse with the most are given prominence over those that are less engaged – likewise with photo’s and other content that is published across the social web.

The real power behind this idea, is the ability to drive the ‘adaptive page’, in a slick easy to use format. Content discovery being aided by behavioural learning that drives changes in display. The magazine format is the template to reorder that display. This means that the pages are adapting to the individual user. This is engagement. This is the future of how content will be delivered. This is why Flipboard is the real deal. Download it now and enjoy. For corporate marketers the lessons are this – engagement is driven through adapting a users experience in a stylish format to suit their interests, and making the experience socially integrated and therefore dynamic.