Blown away

So you already know that I think that flipboard is pretty cool but this morning I am literally blown away by the Facebook and Twitter integration. Flipboard accesses your accounts and pulls in the latest posts, photos, tweets, links and then publishes it into a magazine format. You have to see it to truly get how impressive this is. If you don’t have an iPad find someone who does and check it out. With personal publishing like this traditional options continue to become less significant in my world. Any publisher putting up pay walls or barriers to their content should think about what technology like flipboard means to their business.

Flipboard does it for me

The new iPad flipboard has got me all excited about the future of magazine style reading on the iPad. It is the first app in this sector that I have seen that has surprised and impressed me. They have seamlessly integrated social technology into the product allowing you to comment and share, this is something that has been missed by other major publishers so far. I also really like the idea of building my own mag based on my interests that can simply flip between each channel of content without leaving the app. The format works really well allowing you to browse headlines and then dive into articles that interest you, i have just lost an hour of my evening enjoying the flip tech content. There seem to be questions on whether what they are doing is legal but assuming that they are pulling open feeds of content then what is the problem. One thing that I am not sure about is how are they planning on making money?

Coca-cola setting standards in social

Coke have long been a brand to watch in social from their smart thinking around the take over of the Facebook fan page to their recent activity around the World Cup.  They were one of the first brands to test out the new Twitter ad model in trending topics and have been reported to have grown their social following by 630,000 with their longest celebration activity: http://celebrations.coca-cola.com/youtube.  The twitter activity was reported just in just 24 hours to get 86 million impressions and engagement rate of 6%. These numbers are clearly very impressive to get that level of engagement at that voloume, time will tell if this is just novelty factor.  From the outside Coke appear to have a strong focus on social and are embedding social thinking in their marketing stragies and are not just employing its tactics.

Best in class

I often talk about Starbucks to my clients when I want to show who is getting social right.  The brilliant thing about Starbucks is that they really get the difference between doing a bit of social and using social to enhance and develop their brand and business.  This article is useful for understanding what Starbucks have done to get where they are now: http://fredrodrigues.posterous.com/how-starbucks-builds-meaningful-customer-enga

Maybe I just don’t get it

but iPhone 4 is not doing much for me…  Yes it is attractive and the screen is a bit shinier and the internet connects a bit faster but I don’t that it ‘Changes everything, again…’  Also I am suspicious about the 2 way video camera, why can’t I use it for Skype?  It only works iPhone 4 to iPhone 4… not very open and progressive Apple.

Sit back, lean forward and ….

So, I have been thinking,  if TV is lean back, the laptop is primarily lean forward and mobile is take everywhere then what is the iPad?  The iPad seems to genuinely fulfill a new space in our lives.  One of flexibility and versatility.  Take it anywhere, use it for anything.  I even found myself using it to write a document this weekend, something that I had not foreseen given I have a choice of computers that I could have used instead.  I have never been a big believer of total convergence, ‘one gadget for everything’ mentality but the iPad does take me a little closer to that point of view.

So whilst I search for the defining mode for an iPad I will continue to sit back lean in and enjoy…