Since News.me no longer requires a subscription I decided to give it a try so I could compare it to Zite and FlipBoard . These types of news reader have become quite popular on the iPad. It similar in some ways to FlipBoard and Zite. All three of these apps present content like a magazine. All three are well made and look beautiful. You can flip easily through stories and from one story to another in each of them. However how they determine the stories that are available for you to read is one way they differ. FlipBoard provides various favorite categories from art to technology. Within each category there is a list of providers from blogs to magazines and newspapers, to add to your reading list. You can even add your own categories. You can also add Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader to your reading list. With Zite the choice when setting up is within categories and not providers. However when you read an article you can thumbs up or down a topic, provider and even an author that you like or dislike. The more you use this option the better Zite gets in learning your likes and dislikes. Finally there is News.me which takes who you follow on Twitter and if they use News.me they are added to your list, along with a list of featured users. If someone is not using News.me you can’t add them. You can remove users at anytime under the preference tab. Once you have everything set up, if you click on a person you will see all the stories they linked to on Twitter. With News.me there is no filter other than who you follow.
The second big difference between the three is their sharing and saving options. All three allow sharing to Facebook, Twitter and by email. Zite also shares with Linkedin. All three applications allow you to save articles to Instapaper. Both Zite and FlipBoard save to Read Later. Zite also saves to Evernote and Delicious.
For me News.me is the weakest of the three because of the lack of filters. Also to be honest I not big into following what other people are linking to, because I follow a lot of people who are interested in tech they tend to link to the same stories. Plus there are some people who I want to read when they link to tech stories, but I have no interest in their political links. On FlipBoard you can add people individually like I did with Robert Scoble . Zite has no option to add individuals to your feeds, but I am ok with that. As far as the UI of each application FlipBoard is the winner, it is beautifully looking, and easy to use, despite this FlipBoard is not my winner. I personally like Zite the best of the three, it has the ability to learn my likes and dislikes better than the other two. Plus I like Zite’s sharing and saving options. I am worried about it sale to CNN, I hope they don’t ruin it. What about you what is your favorite. If you are on Android what do you use.