Social media magazine Flipboard pursues TV, films
(Reuters) - Internet video is getting even more crowded. Flipboard, the social media magazine whose investors include actor Ashton Kutcher, plans to add television shows and films to move it beyond the online articles that it offers now.
Context & Ripple Effects
Flipboard's push past text is the second half of a deliberate build-out: in June 2011 the company hired Josh Quittner away from Time Inc, where he led digital magazine initiatives, putting a legacy-magazine editor at the top of its editorial operation before adding TV and film to the product.
The move also rides a broader current the corpus has tracked since July 2011, when Hollywood names including Kutcher, Timberlake, Lady Gaga and Bono were reported courting Silicon Valley social ventures — Kutcher, a confirmed Flipboard investor, is the direct bridge between the two worlds.
First-order effects
- Studios and networks gain a new curated distribution surface for licensed shows and films inside an app whose readers today see only aggregated articles.
- Flipboard enters the already-crowded internet video market Reuters describes, competing directly with established video destinations rather than just other reading apps.
Second-order effects
- Video licensing changes Flipboard's economics: unlike free article feeds, TV and film content requires negotiated rights deals, pushing the company toward paid or ad-supported structures around professional content.
- Rival aggregation and curation apps face pressure to match the format expansion or concede the 'one app for your media diet' positioning Flipboard is claiming.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the line between content aggregator and media network keeps dissolving — apps that started by repackaging others' text become negotiating counterparties for premium video rights.
- Celebrity-capital dealmaking of the kind Kutcher embodies becomes a structural channel through which Hollywood content finds its way into consumer software startups.
The trend: Social reading platforms are expanding from curated text into licensed video distribution, turning aggregators into full-service media gateways.