When comparing Flipboard vs Prismatic, the Slant community recommends Prismatic for most people. In the question“What are the best social news readers?” Prismatic is ranked 1st while Flipboard is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Prismatic is:
Prismatic is extremely fast to use and utilizes clever gestures to make it easy to navigate. Apple reportedly sent them a letter saying that it’s Engineers are looking into how they managed to build such a good app. The app does not utilize tradition navigation bars in order to enable full screen browsing. This makes reading long form content or viewing images a fantastic experience on mobile.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Very polished UI that is organized like a magazine
This app has a very polished, magazine-style layout, that is flipped through by swiping. Because of its layout, Flipboard is especially nice on tablets.
Pro Personalized magazines
Magazines is a features by Flipboard that can allow anyone to create their own personalized magazine by collecting the content from various websites and collate them into a magazine that can also be shared to other readers. Magazines can be set to either public or private access and anyone can follow the magazine.
Pro Free
Pro Cross-platform
Flipboard is available on Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows and web app.
Pro Google Reader import
There is also a simple import from Google Reader.
Pro Social network integration
Flipboard pulls information from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. Everything is aggregated in one app, which can then be flipped through and shared, either directly on Flipboard or on social networks.
Pro Easily discover stories based on topics
Flipboard has millions of Magazines that anyone can follow, covering various subjects. Some cover general topics like home decoration, while others are immensely specific: for example, there’s one just about technological advances that extend human lifespan. All users can create their own Magazines and share them publicly, with friends, or keep them for private use.
Pro Gesture-based design and intuitive user experience
Prismatic is extremely fast to use and utilizes clever gestures to make it easy to navigate. Apple reportedly sent them a letter saying that it’s Engineers are looking into how they managed to build such a good app.
The app does not utilize tradition navigation bars in order to enable full screen browsing. This makes reading long form content or viewing images a fantastic experience on mobile.
Pro News feed optimization
Although Prismatic has a fantastic design, its biggest differentiator from the competition is its best-in-class algorithms that determine what goes into the news feed.
Prismatic uses G+, Twitter, and Facebook feeds to evaluate what the user is interested in. Sources and lists can then be edited to add or remove certain topics.
This app monitors usage and feedback in order to further evaluate user preferences and fetch the most desirable information.
Pro Excellent content discovery algorithm
Amazing algorithm for discovering new and meaningful content. Uses friend and user similarity and sharing to determine the relevancy of content.
Pro High compatibility
Prismatic is available on desktop, iOS, and Android.
Pro Utilizes user location
Prismatic uses current location in order to find local news. If this feature isn't wanted, it can be turned off.
Cons
Con Excessive ads with no way to remove them
Flipboard doesn’t offer subscription plans, having only the completely free full version. However, it does feature ads that appear between articles and there’s no way of removing this function.
Con Needs better organization of topics, mags, users followed
When you follow 3-5 magazines per topic (sometimes more) it would be nice to be able to group some of these together in a way that constricts the 'fire hose' of content.
Con Low quality news sources
The default content is from low quality sources such as Mashable.
Con Doesn't exist anymore. ADMINS can you please take this down?
<looks up at sky> “TECH SUPPORT!!”
Con Formatting issues
Prismatic tries to reformat articles, and many times this is done unsuccessfully. Users commonly have to deal with overlapping text, missed captions, missing pictures, and other formatting errors.
Con Lacks a built-in RSS feed reader
The only option is as a curated aggregated feed. There is no provided way to supply ones own feeds via OPML for example.