Says Kara Swisher:

Flipboard will either face increasing rivalry from Twitter or will end up as a possible acquisition target for it or other companies.

“How users consume and use Twitter is a key part of its future, and that is what Flipboard does well already,” said one person with knowledge of the situation. “There is going to be an inevitable crossroads for the two companies.”

Indeed, Twitter has bought several companies that help users read and discover...

Twitter is a big part of Flipboard’s app, which is very dependent on the tweet feed and accounts for 70 percent of its links, sources said.

Great, now we know what the future of Twitter looks like...

Flipboard is the killer app for the iPad. So sharp, so clean, so sexy. The lack of something like Flipboard is what prevented RSS from ever gaining mainstream appeal. Much as we have discussed how things built from the ground up for mobile will have an enormous edge, Flipboard is a great example of tailored, integrated design that takes limitations and turns them into assets. We need more great applied design like this in apps... And everywhere else too.

Yes and no.

I have yet to read anywhere that talks about what Flipboard's actual engagement is.

Which I take to mean that many people download Flipboard and then don't use it.

Have you seen any evidence otherwise?

Don't know any stats. I just really dig it. :)

So you use Twitter AND an RSS reader AND Flipboard?

That's a lot of reading.

The blog gods require sacrifice...

This is probably as anecdotal as it gets but I know many folks (more than a handful) who routinely will share posts / articles privately over email with me and a pretty good percentage of it come from Flipboard (based on the signature that Flipboard automatically adds)... so there... (-:

And to think that you used to make an analytics product, Ashish!

Your post did not contain any digits!

Flipboard is very strategic to many acquirers. It is one way to get around the "wall-garden" problem of accessing social network content. Twitter probably won't be able to afford them, though McCue is on their board.

At their last valuations,Twitter was worth $8 billion and Flipboard $250 million.

Seems affordable.

Or, couldn't Twitter just build their own version of Flipboard?

Adam, just trying to come through on my reputation as a guy who built an analytics system. (-:

Okay so now we have some numbers...

20 M downloads - I would have thoughts they had more

1.5 M DAU

3B flips per month, now this is something, massive engagement! Averages to 66 flips per user per day!!

via: http://paidcontent.org/2012/08/29/three-billion-flips-later-flipboard-turns-to-video/

Wow. I wonder if it was smart of Twitter to sever ties with Flipboard?

Seems like Flipboard benefited Twitter a lot, from this infographic.

All of these garden-walls are the problem. Flipboard works thanks to content creators trying to get eyeballs and twitter is one of the few open social media sources. Social media companies want to keep the eyeballs and content links and not share with others (competitors). 

Isn't this a similar issue to what PW tries to do by exposing more of the walled-in web through stashes? 

Yes it is. 

It's also why I always appreciate it when you cut and paste your favorite part of the article in the comments -- it tells me if I want to click through and read more.