In an attempt to revitalize its news and content delivery platform and target the new tablet market, today Yahoo announced Livestand, a digital newsstand for iPad and Android devices that will become available in the form of native apps in the first half of 2011. There is no release date and pricing information for now, but a few details about Livestand have been revealed.
Livestand, according to Yahoo, will deliver “a wealth of ever-changing content” from different publishers that will sign up to the project and it will be geared towards a user’s interest and contexts. It sounds like a personalized news platform à la Flipboard, although it isn’t clear at this point whether the information will be real-time, aggregated from social networks and websites, or published at regular intervals from external sources.
With Livestand, we’re using ad formats that evoke the emotion of TV advertising with a highly-visual magazine-like experience. And they’re combined with the effectiveness of an Internet ad that’s data-rich, actionable, even location aware. It’s all personalized and in context – just like our content.
In the first half of 2011, you’ll see Yahoo!’s vast digital content library come to life through Livestand from Yahoo! – from Sports, News, Finance, Flickr, omg!, and the Yahoo! Contributor Network – as iPad and Android tablet applications.
This is all Yahoo has announced for now. It sounds fairly interesting and promising – honestly though, I’m really looking forward to what comes next for Flipboard. Sorry, Yahoo.