Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Mike McCue Talks! Flipboard Finally Launches App for iPhone. (Video)

After promises to get it out midyear, Flipboard is finally releasing its much-anticipated mobile app for the Apple iPhone.

The popular social reader is perhaps the most high-profile available on the iPad, in an ever-crowded field that includes such offerings as Yahoo’s recently launched Livestand; another one code-named Propeller, still upcoming from Google; AOL’s Editions; as well as existing news readers like CNN-owned Zite and Pulse. (Katie Boehret takes a look at the new Flipboard app along with some of those competitors in The Digital Solution this week.)

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Flipboard, which has raised a pile of money from prominent funders at a big valuation, has been beefing up its advertising business, and a move into mobile was critical.

The new iPhone app, said Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, was built from the ground up, and is different than the iPad version.

For example — don’t get all excited — it flips up rather than side to side. Wheeeeee!

It also introduces “Cover Stories,” which gives you a curated-for-you look at news and social updates.

In related news, after being banned, Flipboard announced earlier this week that its iPad app was now available in China.

Oh, why hear all about it from me? Here’s McCue in a video interview, at the end of which he also dismisses my offer for him to be CEO of Yahoo (apparently, life is too short!):

(You can read a review by The Digital Solution’s Katherine Boehret of the Flipboard app here.)

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Nobody was excited about paying top dollar for a movie about WikiLeaks. A film about the origins of Pets.com would have done better.

— Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com comments on the dreadful opening weekend box office numbers for “The Fifth Estate.”