Yahoo’s recently-launched iPad app, Livestand, mimics Flipboard. But this time, it comes with a revenue-generating business model: ads.

Recall that Flipboard, which was voted as the Apple App of 2010, turns tweets and RSS feeds into a gorgeous magazine-like layout. Well, Livestand is set to do something similar. Yahoo’s own iPad app will pull news and other info from its own holdings — popular news, finance, sports, celebrity sites — and content from other publishers, such as Surfer magazine.

It’s all good. Except that Livestand is not yet available on the App Store.

At any rate, Yahoo says it will start with the iPad and then move into the Android tablet territory. Livestand lives and breathes through HTML5, said to be cheaper and more flexible than custom app tools like those used by Wired magazine and The Daily. The goal is to combine the “texture,” interactivity, and fluid experience of tablets and the open web to produce content you can cuddle up with.

Speaking of cuddling up, Yahoo will handle the ads and share revenue with publishers. No word on how the split is to be made. As for subscriptions, that won’t be available at launch, but it will be in the future.

To access Livestand, iPad and Android users must sign in via their Yahoo, Facebook, or Google accounts on the Livestand homepage. The initial content offerings will be personalized, according to Yahoo, but developments are set to allow more personalized refinements – Livestand watches what you like to read. Yes, the same tech that Yahoo uses to present individualized content on its home page is going to find its way into its iPad incarnation.

You can get a glimpse of the iPad app here. It’s not yet available on the App Store, and release date is only vaguely hinted at as “the first half of 2011.”

Let the content aggregator wars begin.

Irwin Allen Rivera

Irwin Allen Rivera loves his wife's cooking so much he's now twice the man he used to be. His English essay placed 3rd at the 2012 Palanca Awards. His philosophical-horror story is included in Philippine Speculative Fiction 8 (2013). He was managing editor and lead writer of Sites and Symbols 2 (2005), a coffee-table book about buildings in UP Diliman - his alma mater (BA Philosophy; MA Creative Writing continuing). He worked at the UP Diliman Information Office before shifting to web content writing full-time. His sudden fiction, "Notwithstanding Pigs," initially a Friendster testimonial, appeared in Philippines Graphic (2006) and in Very Short Stories for Harried Readers (2007).

email: swirlingovercoffee@gmail.com