Flipboard update integrates Zite’s technology

Great news for lawyers. As reported by VentureBeat’s Tom Cheredar (@TChed), Flipboard’s latest update integrates Zite’s suggested content feature.

At the heart of “Flipboard 3.0″ is deep integration of technology from Zite, the mobile news recommendation service Flipboard acquired from CNN back in March. Zite is known for being able to recommend a large selection of fresh content about both broad and specific categories. Today’s Flipboard update adapts that intelligent recommendation technology in the form of 34,000 topics users can now follow.

As way of background, Flipboard is a personal magazine app that provides users a single place to keep up on the topics, news and events they care about. It’s been popular among the legal profession because of it’s visually attractive interface that allows users to flip through their content.

As opposed to merely subscribing to feeds from sources on a reader such as a Feedly or Flipboard (until now), Zite technology curates content on a subject, for example bankruptcy, from the most influential sources (blogs or traditional media) and serves the content up to you.

Better yet, Zite is like Pandora. The more you use Zite to select, view, and share content, the smarter Zite gets in serving up the most relevant content for you.

And there’s more with Zite’s integration with Flipboard.

…Zite’s technology really does an awesome job of helping you discover great user-created digital magazines on Flipboard. That’s significant because user-created Flipboard magazines have been around for a while now, but I’m guessing a lot of people weren’t motivated to discover or follow good ones. (The idea of sifting through a stranger’s curated digital magazines sounds about as fun as reading a collection of persuasive essays written by community college students. There are some gems, but you have to sift through tons of dull/uninspired essays before finding them.)

Logging onto Flipboard on an iPhone or iPad, you will be presented an opportunity to do a search. Upon searching you’ll be presented with a handful of topics to follow and related magazines worth checking out.

Based on your viewing habits, Flipboard will then suggest other topics and related magazines to follow. Your content will then be curated for you, much like the editor of a magazine or newspaper would do for you.

The topics displayed here are random in nature. As a lawyer you will need to dial in on areas of the law, subjects in the law, names of industries represented, and consumer groups. It may take a little time to get what you need. And it’s possible based on your niche, that you’ll not find a perfect topic heading.

Here’s a three minute video with Flipboard’s CEO Mike McCue on Flipboard’s update. Perhaps not all of it relevant for you as a lawyer, but it’ll give a feel of what Flipboard Can do for you.

The gold in Flipboard, now with Zite, is the content presented that you’ll then use for networking online. Networking requires engaging in relevant existing conversations. It’s the content that represents the conversation.

Share the content, comment on it, and reference the content in blogging and you’re entering relevant conversations. It’s this engagement which builds relationships and word of mouth.