Flipboard is coming to the iPhone.
The makers of the popular newsreader app for the iPad are set to release a version for Apple’s (AAPL) smartphone Wednesday. Instead of trying to duplicate the iPad app on a smaller screen, the iPhone version is designed for its smaller screen and is more focused on giving readers bite-size bits of information, primarily drawn from their social networks.
Among Flipboard users, an iPhone version “was the No. 1 most requested thing,” said Mike McCue, CEO and founder of the Palo Alto-based company. “To make it happen, we had to think through the design.”
The iPad app is designed to look like a virtual magazine. Users turn virtual pages by swiping left and right. By contrast, users of the iPhone app will flick up and down to turn pages, much as they might with a Steno pad or reporters’ notebook.
“It’s a more natural gesture on the iPhone,” McCue said.
Additionally, the iPhone app includes a key new feature called Cover Stories, which highlights social networking posts that are most likely of interest to the individual Flipboard user. Cover Stories works much like the News Feed in Facebook, except that it combines Facebook posts with those from Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, Google (GOOG) Reader, Flickr and 500px.
The feature allows users to quickly catch up with and respond to people on their social networks from one application, rather than having to fire up separate apps for each one. For now, Cover Story is exclusive to the iPhone version of Flipboard, although McCue said the company would add it to the iPad app in two to three months.
Like the iPad version, Flipboard for the iPhone provides links to news stories and photographic slide shows. And users will be able to sync their preferences from the iPad app with the new iPhone program.
Flipboard is not yet available for devices other than those running Apple’s iOS software — and may not be for a while, according to McCue.
“We’re going to take a step back after (launching) this and decide” what to do next, he said.
Flipboard started out as an application that reformated Web-based news stories so that they looked like they were designed for a virtual magazine. The company now has some 60 publishing partners, including National Geographic and Vanity Fair. It helps such companies run full-page, magazine-style advertisements beside their content on Flipboard and shares revenue with them on such ads. The iPad app has about 4 million users, according to the company.
The new iPhone app is likely to lure many more users because Apple has sold far more iPhones than iPads, said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, a research and advisory firm. A larger audience could help bring in lucrative brand advertising to Flipboard and its partners, she said.
Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285. Follow him at Twitter.com/troywolv.
