Web Clipping Service Clipboard Arrives On iPhone, Adds Shared Boards For Groups

Clipboard, the recently launched web clipping service with the Pinterest-like layout, is today debuting version 2.0, which brings a website redesign, several new features, and the debut of the Clipboard iOS application. The new app allows users to create and share their clips from their phone, as well as browse through the public clips from others on the service. Although designed for saving snippets of web content from mobile Safari, the app favors visual imagery when browsing through users’ shares. This almost makes it seem more like a photo-sharing service than an Evernote competitor – at least at first glance.

The company is seemingly hoping to hit a sweet spot in between bookmarking and Pinterest-like photo sharing in terms of its design. But at its core, Clipboard favors the research side of things. Unlike on Pinterest, your clips here can be private – there’s no need to use its social features to enjoy either the new app or the website. Plus, the iOS app does have the benefit of actually allowing you to save URLs as well as text and images copied from Safari, which is more than Pinterest’s mobile app allows for today. (That one forces you into Camera mode, oddly).

But at the end of the day, Clipboard has to make the value proposition that web clipping – which is really just modern-day bookmarking – still has a place in a world filled with specialized social services for saving content and search engines that keep track of every page you visit for an endless searchable history available upon demand. To that end, Clipboard has spun out a new feature designed to appeal to more serious web researchers: shared boards. This allows two or more people to collaborate on a board (a collection of clips), with an administrator who can control permissions and memberships.

While the shared boards are intended for business users or those collaborating on projects, the website redesign launching today is directed at the more casual, mainstream users. Clipboard removed the tab called “Shared” from the homepage because users found it confusing, and now only shows your clips and public clips. It also removed the filters from the left side which allowed users to limit content by users, sites and tags because the company felt the filters were too “geeky” and took up too much space.

The updated website is going live this morning, and the new iOS app is available in iTunes here.