Flipboard is tip-toeing into the ecommerce space with the launch of a new feature on Monday: shoppable catalogs.
In March, Flipboard introduced the option for users to create their own magazines full of articles for others to browse. Nearly eight months and more than 4.5 million user-created magazines later, Flipboard is building on this option by letting brands and individual users curate products in their magazines as well.
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Brands, including early Flipboard partners like Banana Republic, Fab and eBay, will be able to create their own shoppable catalogs to promote their products. These catalogs, along with those curated by Flipboard staff, will be featured in a new shopping category on the platform. Users will be able to add items from this magazines in this category as well as from other ecommerce sites into their own magazines. Perhaps more importantly to brands, they will be able to make purchases directly through these Flipboard magazines.
"From the very beginning we've wanted to do this, but as with all things with Flipboard, we've had to sequence them," Mike McCue, co-founder of Flipboard, told Mashable in an interview last month. "We wanted to do shopping this way awhile ago, but we needed to build the curation platform first and so we launched our magazines so that anyone could make a magazine."

The update pushes Flipboard a little closer into competition with product curation websites like Pinterest and The Fancy, though McCue argues Flipboard's approach is unique in that it creates "real catalogs" with products and editorial content, rather than just "a bunch of images."
Either way, the move has the potential to provide a nice boost to Flipboard's revenue. The company is not currently taking a cut of purchases made using the "buy" button on Flipboard, but McCue doesn't rule it out in the future. For now, he says, the hope is that giving users and brands the option to promote products will lead to an increase in advertising revenue.
Flipboard currently has more than 90 million activated users and has raised $110 million to date. The startup is said to be valued at around $800 million.
Image: Flipboard