Flipboard released a rather significant update for its iOS app tonight, bringing the social news aggregator to version 2.0. The update includes a few major new features, including custom magazines and user notifications, and other improvements.
Perhaps the biggest addition to the app is the ability to create your own custom magazines. Users can now collect and save content into their own magazines, sort of like Pinterest, allowing users to essentially bookmark their favorite stuff…
Here’s the full 2.0 change log:
-You can now collect and save content into your own magazines, tap the new “+” button to get started.
-Your magazines are public, but can be made private (viewable only to you).
-Use the new bookmarklet to add items to your magazines from your browser.
-Get Flipboard notifications when people like, comment or subscribe to your magazines.
-Easily email or share magazines to Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc
-Personalized recommendations for more to add to your Flipboard.
-Search is now front and center on your Flipboard, with new improved results.
-Faster page-loading and faster flipping performance.
The new Magazines feature is great. Using it does require you to setup a Flipboard account, if you don’t already have one. But once you get past that, you can save all of your favorite articles to your own custom magazine, and publish it for all to see.
It’s not hard to think of a number of ways that you could use this. Imagine saving all of your favorite recipes or food preparation articles to your own cooking magazine, or combining workout and dietary tips to create your own health and fitness book.
Of course, the other improvements are nice too. The new notifications system will alert you when people like, comment or subscribe to your magazines. And new personal recommendations and a revamped search feature will ensure you discover new content.
As usual, you can find the new Flipboard in the App Store, for both the iPhone and iPad, for free. And you may also be interested in our guides for porting your Google Reader feeds over to Flipboard, and adding iDownloadblog to your Flipboard feed.
So, what do you think of version 2.0?