Flipboard reaches 56 million users; to focus on generating revenue

Social magazine app Flipboard has reached 56 million readers, and the company is now considering ways to capitalise on its growth by focusing on generating revenue. Mike McCue, the company’s CEO, revealed at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York that Flipboard has seen six million new users since it was updated back in March.

CEO McCue at the Disrupt event spoke about his plans of revenue generation (Image Credit: TechCrunch)

McCue said the 2.0 update is also in the works for the Android version of the app. He said the company is “putting the finishing touches on it” and it should be available “very, very soon”. McCue admitted that the Android version of the update has been more difficult to develop than the iOS version, as it has to cater to a wider category of devices.

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The Android version of Flipboard has helped the service gain a huge chunk of users. After releasing the app in June last year, Flipboard's user base grew to 20 million by the end of August, up from five million in January.

"Android has been really striking in terms of how quickly it's growing," McCue said. "We don't break out iOS versus Android numbers, but [Android is] growing very, very fast and is a very important part of our strategy."

McCue’s focus is on revenue as much as on developing the app. He said Flipboard is primarily focused on helping publishers generate revenue by advertising their content. The service wants publishers to be able to charge for content as well as sell products through Flipboard. A news publication should be able to charge users to access certain sections of its paper or a clothing brand should be able to sell its products on Flipboard itself.

That’s not all; Flipboard also wants users to be able to compile articles into magazines and make money off it. That sounds very ambitious, but it could be good news for advertisers, publications and curators.