Flipboard Makes Content Curation Interest-Based With New “Smart Magazines” 4.0 Update

Today, Flipboard launched its redesigned mobile platform with “Smart Magazines.” According to TechCrunch, the major update from the content aggregation company will now allow its users to find stories and other content tied in to their personal interests.

CEO Mike McCue said the major update stemmed from the company’s goal to help dive deep into a specific topic. Prior to the update, the way to browse topics on Flipboard was either to go to the Cover Stories section, where there’s a list of stories put together according to a user’s interests, or to open up the many individual topics and community-created magazines listed on the interface. He said these can get a little overwhelming for the user, and that Cover Stories diminishes a user’s experience in focusing on a specific topic.

“Where do I go if I just want to see photography stuff? I might follow 50 different magazines and 12 different topics [that are related to photography], so how do I see it all together? There hasn’t been a good way to do that until now,” he said.

CNET said that with the new “Smart Magazines” update, any of the app’s 100 million monthly users can now create several smaller "magazines" based on their preferred interests. McCue said the stories in these “Smart Magazines” are chosen by a mix of human curators and algorithms. Moreover, The Verge notes that the update also allows a user to set up content via the “Passion Picker” configuration screen.

"The goal is to give people a highly personalized magazine around the thing that they are incredibly passionate about," McCue added.