Photos: Social magazines - web 2.0 content with newspaper style

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    The apps that make publications based on who and what you're interested in

    Web users are already familiar with online radio stations that play a personalised selection of tunes based on a user's music preferences. Now social magazine apps are aiming to dish up content relevant to their users based on what their friends, industry peers and people they follow find interesting.

    Often delivered in the visual style of a newspaper, these apps present their social media content in a format designed for casual browsing.

    Flipboard for Apple's iPad tablet is one such app that creates a magazine-style publication by harvesting content from a user's Facebook friends and people they follow on Twitter.

    The magazine-style format features virtual 'pages' with a mix of text and images which can be flipped through with the swipe of a finger, enabling the user to sit back and browse the content as if they are flipping through a magazine.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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    Here's a Flipboard contents page, showing various personalised sections, including segments with content posted on a user's Facebook and Twitter accounts, along with content from other Twitter users such as @siliconlatest. Sections can also be based on Twitter lists.

    In addition to content that is personalised or selected by the user, Flipboard offers curated content to flesh out the rest of the social magazine - such as FlipPhotos and FlipStyle. Such sections feature media harvested from a variety of sources, social and otherwise.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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    Users can choose which of the Flip sections or other third-party content to add to their contents page, or just stick with their own brand of social media.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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    Here's silicon.com's Twitter stream seen through Flipboard's filter.

    Flipboard has turned the basic list of tweets into a virtual magazine that makes the most of the iPad's glossy display by foregrounding photos and using a variety of fonts and font sizes.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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    Here's a Facebook account rendered in Flipboard's magazine style - gone are those endless Farmville updates and ugly long lists of comments about comments. Instead, the app zeroes in on web content that has been shared by Facebook users, populating the page with photos and videos from third-party websites.

    Flipboard's content algorithm currently chooses content based on how new it is but in future the company wants to create social magazines based on more sophisticated factors - such as which people users interact with most.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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    paper.li is another app - this time web-based - which turns Twitter feeds into social magazines.

    After logging in at http://paper.li/ with your Twitter credentials, the app generates a personalised newspaper by harvesting the content shared by the people you follow on Twitter.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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    Once your paper.li Daily has been created, written content shared by the Twitter accounts you follow is presented in newspaper-style columns. The columns are ordered into different sections - denoted by titles such as Business and Arts & Culture.

    Photos and videos that have been tweeted get their own scrollable sections within the newspaper.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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    paper.li can also be used to curate a daily newspaper from a particular Twitter hashtag, Twitter list or Twitter user.

    Pictured above is @StephenFry's Daily paper.li - showing the content and topics apparently of interest to the actor, broadcaster and tech enthusiast.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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    The Twitter Tim.es is another web app that generates a personalised newspaper by harvesting content from users you follow on the microblogging service.

    Unlike Flipboard and paper.li, The Twitter Tim.es' focus is more substance than style: it seeks to foreground content that your peers have judged to be interesting, with less emphasis on how that content is presented or ordered.

    The app ranks content based on how often it is tweeted and discussed by the people you follow, and thus how popular or interesting they think it is - creating a 'social usefulness' filter to aid your daily media consumption.

    Pictured above is tech media founder Tim O'Reilly's personalised Twitter Tim.es.

    Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

    Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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Users can choose which of the Flip sections or other third-party content to add to their contents page, or just stick with their own brand of social media.

Screenshot: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com

Caption by: Natasha Lomas

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