Men’s Lifestyle Publication Thrillist Hits the iPad

Thrillist, a lifestyle and product-focused e-mail newsletter for men that has since expanded to the web and smartphones, has stepped further into the mobile space with the release of its first iPad app.

Unlike Thrillist’s apps for iPhone [iTunes link] and Android devices, which are designed for on-the-go discovery of stores and venues, the iPad app [iTunes link] is designed to accommodate a more leisurely reading experience. Users can rotate a wheel at the top to explore content by recency, popularity and proximity, and by experience (eat, drink or shop). A carousel of thumbnails at the bottom enables users to explore all of the venues in a given category.

The app’s primary goal is to encourage people to keep browsing, says Chris Steib, Thrillist’s director of product development, noting that it’s difficult to keep people moving laterally on a website. The site Thrillist.com is not currently optimized for mobile devices, and although it lays out well in the iPad’s Safari browser, navigation is comparatively slow and laborious. (Steib says about 2% of traffic to Thrillist.com comes from the iPad currently.)

In addition to browsing, users can opt to bookmark, share (via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter), pull up images and, where available, play video at the top of each listing. They can also click on the “Show History” button on the bottom right to pull up a venue they forgot to clip earlier.

Design-wise, it’s not the most beautiful iPad app we’ve seen — we wish multimedia was formatted in-line with the text, and otherwise more closely resembled a digital magazine — but it certainly does allow for a seamless browsing experience.