Developer Inq Mobile has just announced a new version of a content discovery app, Material, now available for iOS users as well as those on Android. It’s a free app that aims to sort through millions of sites to find stuff you’ve already showed an interest in, via Twitter and Facebook.
Material grabs all of the sites you’ve linked to, shared, and re-tweeted to deliver a personalized, magazine-style collection of the online ephemera that you’re already checking out, but all in one place.
The app has been on Android for a while now, and has just come to iOS with a newly re-designed app for the iPhone, dropping updates twice a day to your chosen device.
The Material app uses all of your own social activity to tailor a custom layout, so you’ll need to enter your Twitter or Facebook login details to make it happen. The devs even promise to help you find stuff you didn’t even know was out there, something apps like Flipboard and Pulse struggle with, as well.
“With the avalanche of content out there, we’re focused on finding new and exciting ways for people to get directly to the things they love,” said CEO Ken Johnstone in a statement. “Material was the result of this thinking, an app that takes all the hard work out of finding great stuff.”
Apparently, the more you use Material, the more the app’s algorithms figure out what you’re into and work on fine tuning the flow of content into your feed. Also, if there’s something you don’t see in the flow of info, you can always just add it manually. Don’t like something Material thinks you do? Simply remove it from the topics and you won’t see it anymore.
The cool thing here is discovery, really. Once Material figures out what you dig, it goes to sources you may not already know about to find you topical stories of interest from places you don’t usually hang out. That’s a killer feature if it works as advertised.
Give it a shot, and let us know what you think. Will this replace Flipboard for you? Or is it yet another pretender to the social media aggregator’s throne?
Material is out now for the iPhone free of charge from the App Store, and continues to be available on Android handsets via Google Play.
