Flipboard and BHL

Flipboard is a new application for the iPad that is pitching itself as a personalised social magazine. It's launch created a lot of buzz, so much so that many users were unable to add their Facebook and Twitter accounts to it, much to their chagrin. I was one of these annoyed users, but now that I've been able to login I've been having a play and it's a lot of fun.

Nice typography and a clever layout is part of the attraction, and there has been some discussion about whether the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) could be integrated.

@chrisfreeland @rdmpage #bhlib integration on @flipboard? The fb interface is very polished, familiar and comfortableless than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhoneJim Croft
Jim_Croft

Personally I'm sceptical. For me the key to Flipboard is not so much the nice interface, but the fact that the content is timely and relevant: timely because it's taken from live streams, and relevant because it comes from sources you select, including those form your social network. BHL doesn't have any of these characteristics. It's a huge digital archive with very little structure, and what structure it does have is largely bibliographic. For this content to work in a Flipboard-like environment I think BHL would need to develop "streams" based on, say taxa, geography, or readership, and these would have to be personalised. In a sense, Flipboard is displaying streams of content assembled by a combination of editors and your social network, and BHL has neither.