Flipboard brings its slick magazine reading app to the web

Social magazine application Flipboard has launched its first desktop web experience after focusing extensively on providing content to tablet and smartphone readers.

Flipboard first launched as an iPad app in Dec. 2010, and it rose to prominence for its slick design and its ability to make content from the web easy to read. The app has spread to other formats, including iPhone and Android, and the company launched a tool in March to let anyone create magazines.

Now these magazines, created by individuals and companies, are viewable on the web, a way for the app to hit more users and be more accessible. Flipboard magazines on the web look similar to what you’d find on smartphones and tablets, with the clean layout of text and photos intact.

This is just the first step for Flipboard on the web; the company still hasn’t delivered all of the Flipboard reading features such as pulling in shared articles from the web. The company intends to bring the full Flipboard experience to the web by the end of 2013 or 2014.

To see an example of a Flipboard magazine on the web, check out Lonely Planet’s Road Trips or other magazines in Flipboard’s community. If you have created your own magazines with Flipboard and want to see them on the web, just go to www.flipboard.com/profile/ (in the profile space, put your user name).

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Flipboard has raised $60.5 million to date from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Index Ventures, and Jack Dorsey. In late April, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue said his application had 56 million readers.

Check out some photos of Flipboard on the web below.