Until more tools and platforms like micro.blog exist to make it easy for other Generation 2+ people to join the IndieWeb, I thought it made at least some sense to have some additional outreach locations to let them know about what the community is doing in a silo that they may be using.
While I’ll syndicate articles of a general and how-to nature there, I’m likely to stay away from posting anything too developer-centric.
If you’d like to contribute to the magazine there are methods for syndicating content into it via POSSE, which I’d recommend if you’re able to do so. Otherwise they have some useful bookmarklets, browser extensions, and other manual methods that you can use to add articles to the magazine. Click this link to join as a contributor. For additional information see also Flipboard Tools.
I don’t think much of FlipBoard because, as Chris Aldrich says, it’s just another silo. I nonetheless think it’s a good idea to make indieweb more accessible to people, which this initiative does. I was also interested in the discussion of how to contribute to the IndieWeb Magazine on Flipboard, which you can do with its Social Networks Auto Poster (SNAP) system. It’s not trivial, as it involves setting up a FlipBoard app in your WorkPress or Twitter or LinkedIn (or whatever) account. What would be really useful would be a SNAP application that allowed you to send from your social media account to any content service you want, not just FlipBoard. I haven’t seen one yet.
Syndicated copies:
Stephen, I appreciate your thoughts on the siloed nature of Flipboard. I’m reticent to use it myself. I did notice that within minutes of setting it up it already had about 12 followers. I’m curious to see what the traffic looks like coming back from it. With any luck, it will help spread the good word.
I suspect you saw Aaron Davis’ question about how to syndicate data into it from one’s own website. Social Network Auto Poster (aka SNAP) will certainly allow this, but it’s not limited to just Flipboard. SNAP is a third party service which operates as a plugin to WordPress and supports 31 of the bigger/more popular social silos out there including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, etc. So if you’re looking for a service to automatically syndicate content from your WordPress site it’s probably one of the more thorough tools out there. They do require an annual subscription of about US$50 for access to their private API that covers a small handful of the services which don’t provide their own API like Instagram or Google+, but I believe in supporting software that I use on a daily basis, and it’s far better and less time intensive than syndicating to many of them manually.
In any case, I’ve noticed you following some of my work recently. Thanks for the interest and for spreading the word. I’ve been a big fan/follower of your site for a long time.
Syndicated copies:
Might just be me, but I could not find any means of POSSEing to Flipboard in the documentation?
They don’t make it either easy or trivial. For WordPress, the easiest thing may be to use Social Network Auto Poster that has a custom API set up for syndication to Flipboard. Otherwise using Flipboard’s bookmarklet or browser extension may be the simplest method.