Social news app Flipboard was yesterday's hot new app, despite—or perhaps because of—technical problems that prevented some features from working. But there might be a bigger snag: Is Flipboard scraping content it doesn't have the rights to?
-- via gizmodo.com
Flipboard is a new iPad app that purports to be a custom-generated magazine, based on feeds you select and on links shared by friends on your connected Twitter and Facebook accounts. I'm still waiting on an invite, so I can't say how well it works (though the non-customized feeds are laid out pretty nicely). I'm also not sure of the last iPad app I saw this much hype surrounding.
This Gizmodo post brings up an interesting point about whether Flipboard is serving up content it shouldn't.
In my limited scanning of the app, I originally thought it was using RSS -- stories (e.g. from the Onion) were truncated, and a tap on "Read on Web" takes you to the source's site in an embedded broswer, just like an RSS reader. However, it turns out that's not quite the case.
Flipboard scrapes content. In other words, it goes to the site, takes a look at what's there, figures out where the story is (along with accompanying photos/videos/etc.) and yanks them onto Flipboard's servers to figure out how best to display them into the app. The Gizmodo article makes the case that this may not be legal, strictly speaking, because Flipboard displays the content -- content that the sites haven't explicitly made available to outside sources through RSS feeds or another means -- without the ads.
It's an interesting question -- is it ok to view the content without viewing the ads? The same question is asked about ad blockers of course, and moving to another medium, whether it's ok to skip over ads on your Tivo.
The post calls out another "parser", Instapaper, but dismisses the problem in regard to that site because you ostensibly need to view the page -- and the ads -- at least once in order to "Instapaper" it (when you send an item to Instapaper, the site looks at the page, strips all or most of the irrelevant stuff -- menus, sidebars and yes, ads -- and then puts it in an easy-to-read setting on your desktop or mobile device). But here's the thing: that's not exactly true. Many RSS readers or clients allow you to send an RSS item to Instapaper directly. Even if they don't, they most likely let you email and Instapaper provides an email address where you can send links to be parsed and placed in your account. There are even sites that aggregate stories and provide Instapaper links (the little ovals that say "Read Later").
RSS is a different matter entirely: A site chooses whether to offer an RSS feed, and if they do, they choose how much of their content to send out. Some only send out headlines, some do excerpts and some do the full content (sometimes integrating ads into the feed itself). But, as the Gizmodo post points out, the choice with an RSS feed lies with the site. These aggregators operate on their own, without the site's consent.
I'm not sure of the endgame here: As much as I hate to say it, I can't see applications like Flipboard and Instapaper working out long term. If they stay small-scale, then maybe publishers won't be bothered enough by them to care much. But if they take off, I expect conflict. The most convenient solution for the end user may be for developers and publishers to come to an agreement that developers won't strip ads. But of course that eliminates at least part of the appeal of these applications -- unless the ads are unobtrusive and fit the flow of the viewer application (e.g. Instapaper is a very simple, very bare-bones viewer -- an ad that's too distracting would defeat at least part of the point of using Instapaper).
It's a bit of a tightrope for the sites that are producing content: it's important for that content to be accessible, passed around and convenient for the end reader, but it's also important to the site that users actually visit the site -- visits and ad views and site loyalty. To over simplify things: Too loose with control of the content, and the site won't get the hits, won't generate pageviews and won't get any ad revenue. Too tight with control of the content, and users will seek out content that's easier to consume. Publishers will need to find a middle ground, and it remains to be seen whether that world includes applications like Flipboard and Instapaper in their current forms.