Localization of Flipboard’s Topics Engine And Growing Publishers Partnerships Advance Flipboard In Germany, Austria and Switzerland
Berlin, Germany, 17 May, 2018 — Today Flipboard rolls out a significant update to its German edition, giving readers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland a fundamentally new level of breadth and depth in the ways they can personalize the content they see on Flipboard. This represents the second localization of Flipboard’s AI-driven topics engine following its successful 2017 launch in France; additional languages will follow in the coming year. Europeans make up 27 percent of Flipboard’s readership and the company has seen over 16 percent growth in Germany in the last six months.
“We have built a curation platform filled with the stories that inform your day, and we’re dedicated to making that a deeply meaningful experience for every audience in every country,” said Flipboard CEO Mike McCue. “To do that, we index all the stories people, publishing partners, and our editorial team have curated on Flipboard and enable algorithms to organize the content into hundreds of topics—meaning our German readers can now create a high-quality, personalized Smart Magazines, tailored to their specific interests.”
This new capability follows the recent expansion of Flipboard’s partnerships with publishers and brands in Germany. Since the launch of a new publisher program that makes it easier for publishers to add their content to Flipboard, and leading publications, such as Zeit Online, Focus Online, Brigitte, DETAIL, and BRAVO are now available on Flipboard. While there are thousands of sources and brands on Flipboard, a total of 1,800 sources are currently featured inside its German Content Guide.
Flipboard’s topic engine, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze each article to determine what topics it’s associated with, is now trained to index and organize stories for German readers. The engine looks at stories being shared on Flipboard and curated into millions of Flipboard Magazines made by Flipboard editors, readers and publishers. Using AI, the topics engine “understands” the contents of these handpicked stories and delivers them to a broader audience by surfacing them in newly available German Flipboard Topics and Smart Magazines.
Example: Personalizing the Technology Topic in German to create a Smart Magazine
Prior to this release, German speakers on Flipboard who followed sports, for instance, saw a general news feed about all sports based on sources selected by Flipboard editors. Now they can pick subtopics such as Cycling, Soccer, or even Bundesliga, building a feed tailored to their specific interests. Relevant stories come from any publication writing about that topic, regardless if that topic is the typical focus of that publication. By organizing stories based on analyzing the article’s content, German readers are informed and inspired by a much broader range of sources.
The first time Flipboard trained its topics engine for a language other than English was in November 2017, when the company introduced French topics. In the first five months following the release, people in France were able to follow topics based on their interests, driving up the total number of articles French people collectively read per day on Flipboard by 146 percent. Similarly, the Topics Engine has allowed brands to increase the relevancy of their advertising and content, reaching people while they are reading about their interests and passions.
In June 2012, Flipboard introduced a German-language edition of its Content Guide, offering a hand-curated selection of local news feeds on topics such as Tech, Sports, Auto, Celebrities and Fashion. Flipboard’s in-house curation team also assembles Flipboard Fundstücke and Tagesausgabe; the latter is currently the most popular section among German readers on Flipboard.
About Flipboard
Flipboard is an award-winning curation platform, where people go to be informed and inspired. On Flipboard, quality articles, videos, podcasts and products are curated everyday for millions of people around the world. It is a platform that lets people spend time on their interests, develop a deeper understanding of the world and share the best ideas with others by collecting them into their own Flipboard Magazines. Download Flipboard for free in any app store or visit www.flipboard.com.
# # #
Three Smart Magazines powered by the German Flipboard Topics Engine