GetLeaflets: Must-Have iPhone App
Mike Davidson, the CEO of Newsvine, and I were comparing iPhone stories over dinner and drinks tonight in Seattle. He showed me a beta version of GetLeaflets, a site launching today, and I was hooked. Just direct your iPhone browser to getleaflets.com …
Context & Ripple Effects
GetLeaflets arrives one month after Digg shipped its own iPhone-tailored front page, part of a quick-forming wave of publishers rebuilding their sites around the iPhone's screen rather than shrinking desktop pages down to fit. The launch itself is deliberately low-friction: no download, just a URL — getleaflets.com — pointed at from the phone's browser.
First-order effects
- iPhone owners gain another browser-based reading destination on day one, reachable by typing a URL rather than installing anything.
- Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson gets early visibility for the project through a hands-on beta demo to a Seattle tech blogger, seeding word-of-mouth before public availability.
Second-order effects
- Other publishers watching the uptake of Digg's and now GetLeaflets' iPhone pages face pressure to ship their own mobile-optimized versions or cede the phone-browser audience to early movers.
Third-order effects
- If Apple keeps Safari as the primary way software reaches the iPhone, distribution consolidates around whoever owns the best mobile URLs and rendering — making site speed and layout a competitive surface rather than an afterthought.
The trend: Publishers are racing to build iPhone-native web experiences while the device's only app channel is still the browser.