Flipboard CEO: iPad and Mobile Internet Revolutionized Publishing Industry

Mike McCue, founder and CEO of Flipboard, believed that the invention of iPad and the flourish of mobile Internet has revolutionized the publishing industry while giving a speech at the Global Mobile Internet Conference held in Beijing. He also shared Flipboard’s practice about how to design and develop products for mobile devices.

In engineer-driven companies like Google in the U.S. and Baidu in China, designing Internet product is all about data. This is especially true for Google, which is well-known for its data-powered product design discipline.

Mike, although acknowledging the importance of data in the craftsmanship for its implication on user behaviors, suggested that sometimes it’s better to leave data alone while add emotions and soul to the product if one is looking to making ground-breaking stuff.

Flipboard branched out into China last year with local partnerships with China’s most popular microblogging service Sina Weibo and leading social networking site Renren.com. McCue explained that targeting China as its first stop in the company’s Internet expansion is because they believed China would be the largest mobile Internet market in the planet in the future.

Mike went to explain how iPad and new technologies like HTML5 gave rise to the opportunities to integrate soul into mobile ads with the help of finest display on mobile devices. One of Flipboard’s strengths, according to Mike, is its ability to help publisher reproduce beautified contents on iPad or iPhones. Publishers could also incorporated ads with emotions and souls into these contents to bring in more revenue. This kind of ads, at the same time, is less intrusive while more appealing to customers.