AOL Releases "Editions," A Social iPad Magazine

Yesterday AOL joined the mad rush for an iPad product with the release of Editions, a new iPad app set to compete with the likes of Flipboard and Pulse. Editions pulls in articles from a host of different online sources to deliver you a neatly packaged product daily to your iPad. Much like The Daily, Editions is a daily iPad-only magazine with a finite amount of articles to peruse, meant to only be read once a day. Unlike The Daily, however, these articles are not AOL originals. Instead, the content arm of the app functions a lot like Flipboard, allowing you to sign into social networks so that it can cull the news you like from a variety of sources. The app's personalization feature means that just by reading your favorite stories and publications, Editions can tell what kind of news you care about, and can adjust your feed accordingly. For this reason, AOL is marketing it as a magazine that "reads you," instead of the other way around. It's tough to see what differentiates Editions from its array of formidable competitors. Mashable argues that the "holistic, organized news feed" and "finite amount of content" are two of its best features, while TechCrunch points out that the once a day refresh on content can make the news in Editions pretty "stale" by day's end (though it's worth noting that it's possible to change the time of day you'd like Editions to refresh). All in all, it's an interesting effort by a company whose digital prowess has been much maligned in recent years. As for whether or not Editions will be a homerun or a strikeout for AOL, we'll just have to wait and see.

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AOL Releases "Editions," A Social iPad Magazine

Jessica Roy

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Jessica Roy