Flipboard Unveils New Curator Pro Platform and Storyboards Format
Creators will have access to robust analytics, including for each URL
Flipboard is getting into the stories act. What makes it different: They won’t disappear.
The content curation platform introduced a new tool today called Curator Pro, which will give the roughly 3,200 verified users on its platform, including bloggers, influencers and publishers, access to a new content packaging format.
Under that tool, the exclusive group will be able to create so-called Storyboards and see how the content performed with a new analytics dashboard that shows metrics such as comments, flips, likes, opens, social engagements and views.
The company said it has approximately 145 million monthly active users, and its verified red checks are awarded at its discretion based on factors including authentication (proving that the account belongs to the person or organization it is representing), quality and frequency of curation, reputation in the areas they share content about and social followings on other platforms.
Verified users in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. will gain access to Curator Pro today. France, Germany, Italy and Spain will follow this summer.
The development represents a maturation of the platform’s unique, user-generated content. When the company first launched in 2010, it relied on Twitter for content, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue said.
The company released a functionality two years later that enabled users to recommend content from the platform’s magazines, its name for the user-curated collections of content on a particular topic. The company now claims to have over 30 million of those magazines on the platform.
Storyboards will feature a headline, description, main image and URLs, all added by their creators.
Creators also choose up to five topics relevant to the content that will be included in their Storyboard, which Flipboard says will boost the stories’ discoverability.
URLs in the posts can link to articles, Flipboard magazines, newsletter signup pages, photos, products, social posts and videos, and they can be organized into sections, which can contain up to 10 URLs per post.
For example, Storyboards could include the five best steakhouses in New York, five must-read books to learn about something and the five best videos to watch if you want to learn about cryptocurrency.
Published Storyboards will be shown to the creator’s followers on Flipboard as well as to users who follow the related topics designated by the creator.
They can also be shared through Flipboard magazines, email and social platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Flipboard said it has been beta testing Curator Pro and Storyboards with over 100 publishers and users over the past couple of months from the likes of TheGrio, National Geographic and Popular Science.
Flipboard’s goal is to continue “informing and inspiring people around the world” with stories that have a “a beautiful mobile presentation,” McCue said.
