How we will continue to inform and inspire you in 2018 The world in 2018 will be full of dramatic change, improbable victories, and game-changing breakthroughs. Elections will be won and lost. Olympians will be hailed. Cryptocurrencies will rise and fall. And technology will continue to inexorably transform our world. To make sense of it all, the team at Flipboard will be working hard to provide you with new insights and inspiration from a myriad of the world’s most interesting and authoritative sources. We’ll package those stories in new and interesting ways to give you fresh, 360-degree perspectives. And we’ll keep making your Flipboard even faster, more personalized, and more beautiful. Last year, we shipped hundreds of improvements, big and small, via a total of 58 app releases—29 on Android and 29 on iOS, along with more than 200 updates to flipboard.com. We also added many more publishers and blogs while introducing powerful new ways to personalize your Flipboard. As a result, people now spend twice as much time each week on their Flipboards as they did a year ago. Our publishers have noticed this, too: they’re seeing nearly twice as many articles opened than they did just six months ago. Flipboard is now consistently a top referrer across the Web, which means more people are discovering great journalism from more great publishers. This year, we have some important things on tap, including: More insights from more sources: We’ve accelerated the ability for new publishers and blogs to join Flipboard, thanks to our new publisher portal. As our team reviews each of these, you will see more stories from quality sources you never knew existed. You will also see more curated roundups, like “Explainers,” “Follow the Money” and “Left, Right and Center,” to help give you a full understanding of the most important things happening in the news—without the noise and distraction of fake news and extremism. We hope this will help more people discover Flipboard as a key place to turn to for quality journalism from a plurality of voices with different perspectives (that’s why we’re rolling out our new brand campaign). More podcasts, books and video: Books and Flipboard naturally go together. Expect to see more book recommendations from interesting people for the topics you’re following. Meanwhile, as our publishers create more video for everything from surfing to startups to style, we will give you more ways to discover and experience it. Love podcasts? So do we. Stay tuned for some great things here to liven up your 2018 commute. More perspectives and inspiration: The millions of mags our community curates have always been magical. Check out #MagsWeLove for tons of awesome examples. Some of my many favorites include Middle East News for the Perplexed, The Next Best Things, and The Ultimate Travel Bucket List—a group mag filled with mind-blowing destinations curated by other world travelers. Throughout 2018, we will be supercharging our curator community, which means you’ll see more stories recommended by leaders, editors, experts, and other thoughtful people with fascinating perspectives. And if you’re a curator, you’ll get some exciting new ways to package and present your work to your followers. Watch this space. More beauty: As phone screens get bigger and more powerful, you’ll start seeing your Flipboard present articles, images, video, audio, and animation in increasingly beautiful, immersive and useful ways. I’m especially excited about some of the spectacular new layouts we’re working on for the iPad and the Web. More personalization: We took personalization to a whole new level last year with Smart Mags. This year, we’ll give you new controls for fine tuning your Flipboard, including a more powerful version of “show more/less like this.” For politics, we’ll help you find more diverse sources from across the political spectrum and let you fine-tune Flipboard to see more stories about specific issues and political leaders. More polish & performance: It’s our version of a 2018 fitness plan—we’re going to make Flipboard faster as we hone our platform. We’ll carefully polish the UI and we’ll make common interactions smoother and more efficient. 2018 is bound to be a defining year for all of us. I hope that Flipboard will help you discover the kinds of stories that not only inform you but also inspire you to share, engage and help move the world forward. All the best, ~Mike