Flipboard is one of the more popular news apps out there. In fact, it is pre-installed on a number of devices. Which makes the fact that it has hit 500 million downloads from Google Play, even more impressive. This month, the popular news app actually hit the 500 million download club, which isn’t as exclusive of a club as the 1 billion download club (which mostly only has Facebook and Google apps), but it’s still pretty elite.
What made Flipboard popular is the fact that you could add just about any news source to the app. But another reason is because you can flip through the news like it’s a magazine or a newspaper. Hence the name ‘Flipboard’. It’s one of the many, many apps out there that is able to bring all of your favorite news sources together, allowing you to use just one app to keep up with all of the news that you care about most. Even the news of what’s happening in your own backyard, which is still just as important today. Flipboard does allow you to follow all of your favorite topics as well. Which allows you to find some newer news sources that you may not have heard of before. They also have “The Daily Edition” which curates some of the bigger news for the day into one section. So you can read that section and be set up with what’s going on in the world, without needing to read a ton of articles in Flipboard.
To put it simply, Flipboard has many features that are great for casual reading of news, or hardcore readers. It’s had a great ride since debuting in 2012. It has garnered over 700,000 5-star reviews on Google Play, with an average of 4.4-stars from those who took the time to review it. While it has just passed 500 million installs, Flipboard isn’t slowing down anytime soon. What will be interesting, is whether Flipboard can become the first non-Facebook and non-Google app to hit 1 billion installs. They would also be the first news app to hit that milestone which would also be an amazing feat for the company and developers behind the app.