The takeaways
- Flipboard, a news and content curation platform, has launched Curator Pro, an update to its Storyboards feature.
- Publishers can create bite-sized content on any given subject and receive boosts via shareability and trending topics.
- As well as building audiences on Flipboard, users can direct followers to their own platforms via clickable content.
What happened?
News and content aggregator Flipboard recently launched “Curator Pro,” an update to its shareable Storyboards. Aimed at publishers and bloggers, Storyboards compresses articles, posts, podcasts, videos, tweets and other content on any topic into short-form stories. The rollout began in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia and includes analytics tools measuring both Storyboards and their individual posts.
The company places special emphasis on the versatility and shareability of its feature. Storyboards have one-click share options for social media, email and text, plus a follow option for the user-creators. Users can also access a news feed-style feature named “Today” to view Storyboards selected by the editorial team. The “Explore” feed also promotes other publishers.
Working for publishers
Flipboard’s CEO, Mike McCue, explained that Curator Pro easily establishes a bigger picture on a given or trending topic. It produces “a series of stories that can show a trend, give deeper perspective, or provide advice and insights.” In this way, Storyboards provide a “bigger picture, a round-up important coverage or even multiple sides to a story.” Moreover, McCue mentioned “sharing stories that move us to understanding or action.”
In the case of Storyboards, that includes hashtagging, link sharing and searchable feeds arranged by subject. These enable publishers to not only build and influence Flipboard audiences but direct them to content off the platform. Storyboards are also designed with bite-sized content consumption in mind, keeping posts direct and simple.
Flipboard numbers its audience at a considerable 145 million people and describes Storyboards as “a new way to drive traffic to publisher sites.” Vice President of Engineering Troy Brant has promised future magazine curation tools and analytics updates to Curator Pro.
