Aggregating the Aggregators and this article is an ad...

The below article describes the Flipboard - yet another effort to "become your destination for social news." It's one more way to help users sort through the noise of information overload and help surface the content that would be most interesting, relevant, etc. into their own magazine like spread on their device of choice.

My question about the article is slightly more esoteric and not really about the Flipboard but can be applied more broadly to any wired article or any technology article anywhere. When is technology reporting earned media? When is it news? When is it a giant ad?  I'm not sure the distinctions matter anymore but I also wonder how many companies consciously have a strategy for earned media as part of their overall marketing campaigns. In government, we use it mercilessly through press releases. (Think NYC's release of the NYC Condom. The Catholic Church was a huge help with that one.) Hollywood does it well. It feels like tech and other companies ride the waves and earned media on their products is just often negative as positive. Marketing departments should dedicate specific time and attention to improved earned media opportunities. It may just be one more drop in the information noise bucket or it may help their products rise to the level of cover story and not just another ad to click on.

Flipboard Lands on Android, Gets Google+ and YouTube Integration

• By Christina Bonnington
• Email Author
• June 22, 2012 |
• 2:45 pm |
• Categories: apps

Flipboard is on a mission to become your destination for social news, no matter what device you’re on. In addition to being on iPhone and iPad, the animated news-browsing app is now available for Android phones, the Kindle Fire, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook tablet.

Flipboard’s claim to fame is that it takes input from a variety of social media destinations and aggregates them in an aesthetically pleasing, magazine-like spread. This includes everything from Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, to your Google Reader subscriptions and Flickr, and even SoundCloud for podcasts. Along with officially launching on Android, Flipboard is also adding integration with Google+ and YouTube to this update.

Flipboard CEO Mike McCue told Wired that one of his company’s main goals is to surface great content to the user through the app’s “Cover Stories” section. With so many places to find great content, there’s a lot of noise to sift through, so Flipboard tries to bring the highlights that you’d be most interested in straight to the surface. To do this, the app uses a mix of social, editorial, and algorithmic curation that’s mixed and matched in different ways on a per-user basis to identify the best influencers for you.

As for the Android version of the app, Flipboard carefully engineered the app so that it looks sharp on Android phone and tablet displays from 3 to 7 inches in size. It uses the same upward page-flipping action as the company’s iPhone app, which it released in December, rather than the larger, more magazine-inspired iPad user interface. It’s important to note that there’s no specific version for larger Android tablets yet, only a version for phones and for the 7-inch tablets from Amazon and B&N, so the less-complicated, phone-optimized navigation makes the most sense.

Flipboard is also bundled with the new Samsung Galaxy S III, with the app itself and a slick widget that cycles through your cover stories.

Flipboard is free and available from Google Play, the Amazon Appstore, the Barnes & Noble Nook Store, and from Samsung Apps.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/flipboard-android-google-plus/