Magazines on the Apple Watch – Flipboard launches app
The company offered a preview of their forthcoming Apple Watch app, which they’ll cover in more detail later this week via a company blog post. Given that a number of readers today often turn to Flipboard to consume long-form content – like magazine-length articles – in addition to browsing through photos, social updates and shorter news stories, there was some question about how the service would make the transition to the Apple Watch’s small screen.
Here, it seems, news apps are focused on delivering short bursts of content to readers – and that’s the direction Flipboard is now headed. flipboard-apple-watchThe company explains that users will be able to read a “smart summary” of the news story on the Apple Watch, and then if they want to actually dive in and read the full story, they can do so on their iPhone. The app will take advantage of Apple’s “Handoff” feature in order to pass the link from the wearable device to the smartphone, taking you directly to the story you want to read. As for what stories are appearing on the Flipboard Watch app in the first place, that’s where the service’s curation capabilities come into play. Flipboard will algorithmically choose the top 10 stories based on the top 10 topics a user follows on Flipboard, and then present these on the Watch. In addition, the Watch app will allow users to add stories they’re shown to their own magazines, or share them with a friend from the Watch itself.
