January 9, 2014

Forbes recently added a brand new way for its readers to have interaction with content in its mobile application via a feature called “Stream.”

Stream enables readers to share images and text from Forbes’ mobile issues across traditional social networks to boot as within an internal social network for Forbes enthusiasts. The recent feature is powered by Maz, and Forbes plans to expand it to Android and other platforms inside the near future.

“When we were working with Maz we had this excellent opportunity to check out an extra sort of stream which was more image based,” said Lewis D’Vorkin, media chief product officer at Forbes, Manhattan.

“What I liked about what they were doing, it was very slick cool functional technology that one was a stream — not a text-based stream — but image-based, and that i like that greatly since the world is moving to more image-based streams, in case you examine what’s happening with Twitter,” he said.

“The more thing I liked concerning the stream is it enabled our magazine audience to take part in a social newsfeed where they might easily clip and share what they felt was important in that issue and in any issue of Forbes and share that with the community.”

Stream
The Forbes iOS app is free to download, but consumers can only access a preview version unless they join Forbes. The mobile issue contains the identical content because the print version of Forbes magazine, however it also links to Forbes.com and a few other features.

Now Forbes has added another layer to its app with the social network Stream. Readers can create a different Stream log-in or register via their Facebook account.

Readers may also share clipped content via other social media platforms, which includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and Evernote, in addition to via email and iMessages.

When readers click a clip in Stream they are going to be directed back to the source of that clip.

The cover of the mobile Forbes issue

Mobile reading
Forbes launched its mobile app last year and has since been all in favour of enhancing its mobile and social offerings.

Last year, Forbes’ mobile audience grew 150 percent with 30 percent of its traffic coming from mobile devices (see story).

Now the publisher is attempting to accumulate its social integration within its mobile offerings. In keeping with Mr. D’Vorkin, Forbes desired to transcend simply letting readers share an editorial on Facebook or Twitter and allow them to partake in an internal social community of Forbes readers.

“Our strategy over three-and-a-half years have been to lay our authoritative journalism on the center of a social media experience,” Mr. D’Vorkin said.

“We have a tremendous social audience, at once our social traffic is exploding,” he said. “At the similar time that our mobile audience is constant to rise, where 30 percent kind of of our traffic came in from mobile devices.

“We have an exploding social audience, we’ve a rising audience this is accessing Forbes through mobile; it only is smart to integrate the 2, social and mobile.”

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York