Flipboard App Review

Digital Mom Blog reviews the Flipboard App

Flipboard app is an app that consolidates everything you want to read, both social media and blogs onto one stream.

Flipboard App Review

So you’re on the web. You have a Facebook account and a Twitter account and all of your friends from high school are there, and then some of your co-workers are linked to you.

Then there is good ol’ mom who thinks she is cool and is online and then there is your ex-boss and all of these people are “socializing” on various sites. They are sharing links and posting updates. You watch a handful of these people and your “news” is now what your circle of friend online has posted.

That’s cool and all. It’s WHAT social media is. But what if you had 1 spot to read it all.

We’re not talking RSS feeds. Anyone can create a reader for that. What if you could read all of the content from the people you visit most in ONE iPad app? Yep, no more searching Facebook and looking at Twitter – wham an iPad app taht looks at your faves and delivers your content.

Now you can.

Meet the FLIPBOARD iPad App

It’s new. It’s FREE.. And the internet is buzzing about this app. And I AM FRUSTRATED with the app. More on that shortly.

So the video plays like something built for an Apple commercial. After hearing about the Flipboard tonight, I grabbed my iPad and downloaded Flipboard. Great. Neat. Pretty. FREE!

Now this is the part where I get FRUSTRATED.

The point of the app is that you input your social media logins – it searches for content that is relevant to YOU from people in your inner circle. Then Flipboard displays all of this lovely content in a magazine type interface. Flipboard is coined as “your personal magazine. It always has content you care about because it knows who your friends are.” Your Flipboard connects to your social network and grabs content that is good for you. You can share and reply right in the app. Your Flipboard essentially becomes your home base for all of your content. All stuff you care about in one place. It’s your social media magazine.

Again, SIGN ME UP.

I Launch the app – and this is the message I get:

Apparently when an iPad app (Flipboard, I’m talking to YOU!) goes viral – it’s not anticipating the load. Over capacity. Not a good sign.

So after frustration of reading how darn cool this iPad app was, and NOW I can’t even play with it, I made a video. It’s a dumb little video of the Flipboard and its little issue. Well, then I ran into another issue. My dumb little video was made with a super cool Moldy Peaches song. After I uploaded (which its in HD and took 12 hours to upload, don’t ask) – YouTube and the copyright police got all up in my business and fined me with using one of their pre-selected songs… So what does that mean? That means you can watch my dumb little video, which is now stupid as well with Plain White T’s playing. ANY who… 12 hours, I am making you watch this….

This looks like a “Killer App”. This has the potential to be one of those things that changes your mind and makes you says YES, i’ll dish out the $500 for this iPad just to ge this app. Hopefully they’ll get their stuff straight so I can adequately review. It looks so cool. GRR. If it would just WORK!

UPDATE: Since writing this, Flipboard posted an update to their iPad app. I updated and now am prompted with a nice little box that says “HEY, yes we suck and we know that we’re overloaded, but we are going to make you a deal – give us your email and we’ll put you in line and let you know when we don’t suck.”

So here I am Flipboard. I am waiting in line. Waiting to find out how cool you are.

I will give them props for being proactive on Twitter and on Get Satisfaction. That transparency I do admire.