Flipboard: More Proof That Magazines Are the iPad's Killer App

(MoneyWatch)  Though I'm not convinced the iPad will be the killer technology that saves the magazine industry, I am growing more convinced of the reverse: that to many in the app world, the digital magazine is the iPad's killer app. This was reinforced by yesterday's launch of Flipboard, a so-called "social magazine" that takes all of the content shared from people's Twitter and Facebook posses and puts it into a flipping-friendly magazine format. Right now, it is the no. 1 free app in the iPad app store. (See photo at right -- click for a larger version -- and demo video below.)

In addition to the concept, which has been done by other people, what makes this so interesting is that it furthers the idea that the tried-and-true magazine format is the way to display things on an iPad -- even if this time the pages are flippable using an index finger instead of an entire hand.

When I first saw the demo video, it reminded me of Twitter Times, a super useful browser-based client that creates an online newspaper from the links shared by people users follow on Twitter. But compared to Flipboard, it's like cave-drawings. Some links are presented as ugly, long URLs -- others display with a nice looking headline and visual, and it's in the typical blog-style, scroll-down format. Much as I like it, Twitter Times doesn't really encourage magazine reading behavior.

The Flipboard launch is only one of two announcements this week which demonstrate that while the magazine business may be enamored with the iPad, people who create apps for the iPad are also enamored with magazines. HP's custom-publishing unit, MagCloud, launched a feature earlier this week that will transform a MagCloud magazine into an iPad friendly magazine instantaneously, as long as the publisher wants to include the feature. Everything old is new again.

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• Memo to Magazines: Your iPad Strategy Can't Work
• No Adobe Flash: A True, Sad Tale of What It Might Be Like to Own iPad