Yahoo Doesn’t Understand What Makes Flipboard Special

• By Tim Carmody 

• November 2, 2011

My first impression of Yahoo’s new Livestand reading app is that it looks beautiful. My second is that, despite rumors that it was going to be a lot like Flipboard, it isn’t designed much like Flipboard at all. And no, that isn’t a good thing.

I’ve actually been excited about Livestand since I first read about it back in February. I’m a future-of-reading wonk. And as a journalist, I’m fascinated by all the different paths news organizations are trying to present and support their content for tablets, with or without going through an App Store:

Anyone wins who can provide a unified portal for both customers and publishers to manage content for tablets and crucially, a great experience for readers. Apple may own the app store and the hardware, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only game in town.

But with Livestand, Yahoo seems to have taken exactly the wrong approach. It’s not about your technology, your design, your publishers or your advertisers. First and fundamentally, it’s about readers.

Those other four pieces are important. In a different media climate, they would be what you’d start with. But not today.

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