Today, Zite released its iPhone app, thereby making its product universal. However, that was about it. For all we knew, this was just the week news and magazine apps decided to update themselves. Starting with FLUD releasing their 2.0, then Flipboard announcing their iPhone app. This was just natural succession, right? Wrong. In actuality, Zite is up to something much bigger.
Recently acquired by CNN, Zite wants to eventually make its way onto all major platforms. In what order this will occur is still under wraps. However, the iPhone was obviously next. After making their grand appearance into the tablet world with their amazing iPad magazine app, the company was ready to make their product truly mobile. Mark Johnson, the startup’s CEO, had this to say:
Personalization is key to news discovery. But, as soon as you have personalization on one device, you want your personalization to become ubiquitous. The iPhone is the next logical device for Zite and it brings us closer to our goal over the next year to bring Zite to all major platforms. Since being acquired by CNN in August, we’ve released several updates to the iPad, hired key employees, and now released Zite for the iPhone. We’ll continue to accelerate on our key priorities – better personalization, Zite on all devices, and improvements to the iPad – over the next 12 months.
In other words, the company is hard at work to make its product even better. “We really tried to concentrate on the content and give a really simple design that lets the content shine through. One of our top goals for next year is to get our app onto as many platforms as possible,” says Johnson. Funnily enough, the CEO carries around Windows Mobile so no Zite for him – for now.
As for the competition, Johnson has nothing but love for them:
It looks weird that we [FLUD, Flipboard, Zite] all did it the same week. But when you think about it, it’s kind of logical. If you’re going to launch something before Christmas, you’re not going to launch it the week after Thanksgiving or the week before Christmas. So you really only have this two week window. This was the ideal week to launch something and we all realized it.
Constantly working on improving their algorithm and making the product better, Zite won’t be taking a vacation this winter. So far, the tireless hours have paid off. Ever so lately, finding great news to read has gotten a bit – easier.
