Import RSS into Flipboard

Import RSS into FlipboardA lot of interesting information can be found while using Flipboard. The way Flipboard places emphasis on certain stories helps to bring out a couple hidden gems from time to time.

One thing that seems to be missing, and that would make it a more complete application, is the inclusion of RSS feed support. If Flipboard would support Google Docs, there’s a good chance I’d open it a lot more on my iPad, but currently it seems to be an evenings and weekends application.

As it turns out, there’s a nice little hack that lets you insert your RSS feeds into the Flipboard iPad application. All you have to do is get a feed into Twitter using TwitterFeed, and then use Flipboard to connect to that Twitter account. Here’s how:

Part One:

  1. Create a new Twitter account,
  2. attach the new Twitter account to TwitterFeed,
  3. add the RSS feed of your choice to TwitterFeed.

Part Two:

  1. From your main Twitter account follow your new news feed account on Twitter,
  2. put that feed into a list of its own,
  3. open Flipboard, and click on the “Add A Section” button,
  4. from here pick your new Twitter list.
  5. Done.

RSS Feeds in Flipboard, muwahaha.

Thanks to Alex Iacone for sending in the tip.

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About Joshua Schnell

Man, Myth, and Legend, Joshua is the Editor-In-Chief, and founder of Macgasm. He produces two podcasts, Macgasm TV, and The AppOrchard, and can be heard on CBC Radio once every couple of years.

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Dan

So, do you need to do this for each feed you want to use on Flipboard? That is, if I wanted to follow three blogs, would I need three additional twitter accounts, three twitterfeed accounts, etc.? Am I missing something?

Thanks! Why won't they just add rss???

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Joshua Schnell

Originally, but as of the latest update there's greader support. So you should be good to go. :)

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Dan

Well, as far as I can tell, not really. When I added my GR to Flipboard, it essentially places all of your GR subscription in one single Section. This means that when I click on my GR Section, I am reading a mix of every single subscription I have, spanning more than a half dozen topics and categories. Very annoying.

What's even more annoying is that there are subscriptions that will be displayed on FB through GR, and if you dig around in the GR Section you can figure out how to free individual feeds from GR and put them in their own Section on FB, but if you then delete the unnecessary GR Section, all of the other Sections you previously liberated disappear as well.

Anyways, I cannot tell you how frustrating this is. FB is a great looking and feeling reader and it simply boggles my mind that they have yet to include proper RSS feed ability. It makes no sense at all to me. I want to shake someone by the shoulders and scream, "JUST ADD RSS!"

As it is, I either have to utilize multiple emails to make multiple twitter accounts, etc. or I have to have separate google reader accounts with only one subscription in each. Maybe I am in the minority, but I don't want to have to click on a single GR Section and skim through potentially dozens and dozens of subscriptions. Especially when I may not have any desire to read about anything else other than sports, or tech at the moment.

That said, thanks for the hack, though it turns out it will be far too much work. I am trying so hard to stick with FB. It really is perfect otherwise. But this may be a fatal flaw as it means I either have to hack, use multiple readers to get all of my feeds, or put up with the limitations (flaws) of their GR implementation.

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