On Tuesday last week, Flipboard launched a feature allowing its users to create and share ‘magazines’. Within 24 hours of the launch, 100,000 new ,magazines were created. This speaks to the tremendous interest in self-curation. With the magazines being sharable it will be interesting to see the reach into the special interest space as this is where I’d expect many to focus. Talk about disruption.
Mark – it’s an interesting use of the word ‘magazine’ here. Flipboard (it seems to me) is like Pinterest: it’s a means of collating or, as you say, curating existing material from the web in one place. That’s interesting, and useful and fun and all sorts of other positive things. But, to my mind, it’s not a magazine. A magazine has ORIGINAL CONTENT – it’s the outworking of time, thought, planning, skill, creativity, expertise.
I’m concerned that these days so many people seem to think that just ‘copying and pasting’ other people’s work and perhaps allowing readers to infer that it’s their own is gaining increasing legitimacy.
Megan,
Anyone using Flipboard knows that the content is not made by the person who collated it.
Its simply a different way of having readers share and distribute original content.
Jarryd – I understand that no one using Flipboard is trying to deceive readers. What I was commenting on was that these collations of other people’s work are being given the label “magazine”, which is a pity, since a ‘real’ magazine is something quite different.
Megan,
Consumers decide what a “real” magazine is.
These collations may not be the same as most print magazines in their current format, but they are an evolution of the medium.
The same argument is made of social media and news. Some claim that it isn’t “real” news when its comes from social media. Despite the claim there are a staggering number of people who will tell you that they get their news from Twitter. The same applies to blogs.
And that’s my point exactly, Jarryd: that it’s a pity that a mere collation of other people’s work may be given the same status/label as original work.
That’s not my point at all Megan. My point is that some lament the evolution of certain mediums and see them as less worthy. While you may not like it being called a magazine, plenty of consumers clearly disagree.
The work in these collations a may or may not be original. They aren’t produced by the collator but how is that any different from a magazine?
Megan, this is the world of today – rapid sharing, easy curation and easy content generation.
Jarryd and Mark – I get that these ‘publications’ are the current ‘thing’, that no one is trying to pretend that they’re anything that they’re not. See my positive comments in my original post. I’m merely lamenting that it seems sometimes that people confuse copying, pasting and collating with genuine creativity, design and originality. That’s all.