Flipboard 'magazine-style' reader now available in China
updated 11:30 pm EST, Mon December 5, 2011
Uses content from two of China's social networks
Aggregate RSS and social-network reader for the iPad Flipboard is opting to customize its first international edition for China, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Chinese version of Flipboard will add content from two of China's largest social networks, a Twitter-like micro-blogging site called Weibo and the country's largest social-networking site, Renren.
Flipboard has been a popular outlet for aggregating both feeds from social networks and other specialty sites, particularly visually- or news-oriented sites like Flickr, 500px, Engadget and The Atlantic. It repackages plain-text and photo RSS feeds into magazine-style opening pages which can then launch the original page for further reading. The company claims over four million users that generate 650 million page views per month, up nearly 100 percent from late spring.
The move into China first may have been an attempt to head off copycats and clones in the country. Flipboard says it has identified at least five such apps, including some that the company says is using portions of its own code. It also credited the nation's 500 million internet users and the popularity of Apple's iPad with helping make the choice of China as the first overseas version.
The deal has been worked out with the cooperation of the Chinese government, which usually involves a foreign company opening offices within China or obtaining a special license to operate in the country. Flipboard in China is expected to aggregate content almost exclusively from its Chinese partners and other Chinese sites that already have government approval, avoiding the issue of censorship. The government of China blocks access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other such western sites, then encourages companies to create similar versions that are native to the country, cater to Chinese users and do not display un-approved content.
Flipboard is hopeful that in time, Chinese-language versions of some content from US publishers such as Condé Nast and Hearst Corp. will be available. For now, the Chinese version will be ad-free but will eventually feature ads as the US edition does. The company plans foreign-language editions in other countries, which are expected to appear over the course of 2012. [via The Wall Street Journal]
