Popular news aggregation tool Flipboard has crossed over into version 2.0 and brings big new features, first for iOS users.
Creating your own curated magazines is central to this major revision of the service. The navigation panel when reading articles now includes a "+" button. Selecting this adds the article to your personal magazine. You can maintain several magazines at one time, and when you select an article to add, you choose which magazine it belongs to.
Once created, you can share your title on Twitter and your followers can subscribe to it. Your carefully crafted magazine will then display on their front page like any existing publication or topic.
This focus on community curated content opens the doors for Flipboard to become its own social network. Indeed, there are new social tools on hand in the 2.0 update, including the introduction of 'reflips': a notification of when someone includes content from your magazine in their own collection.
Gold in 'dem hills
As with Twitter and Facebook, you can expect businesses to quickly get involved with Flipboard magazines, too. According to the Guardian, magazine print titles like Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair are already set to publish mini-magazines, complete with advertisements.
Etsy is another major online brand hoping to cash-in on Flipboard 2.0, with the two companies entering into a partnership to sell Etsy goods through a Flipboard catalogue. A "buy" button now appears at the bottom of Etsy product pages, allowing readers to become shoppers with a minimum of effort.
Finally, the way searches are displayed in Flipboard has also been overhauled. Now, when you enter a search term, Flipboard will show you all current articles relating to your keywords as a new magazine -- allowing you to flip through them. You can then save the search as a magazine of its own, and it will update with new stories as they become available.
The 2.0 update is now available for iOS devices through the Apple App Store. There is no official word from Flipboard on when the update will come to the Android platform, but the Guardian is reporting that it should land within a month or so.
