Google has updated its Google Currents social news reading app to make it easier to find breaking news and browse content from multiple sources.
Similar to Flipboard, Pulse and Zite, Google Currents is an aggregator of various publications presented in a way more akin to reading a magazine rather than an RSS feed.
On its Android blog, Google outlined some of the biggest changes to Currents.
Structurally, Google Currents now organizes editions (Google's term for publications) into category groups. That means Mashable shows up in Science and Technology, whereas TVGuide.com shows up in Entertainment.
Google has also made it easier to swipe through various editions. Vertical swipes show the headlines and an image of the story and you can easily see what you want to read.
The biggest change to the app, however, is that users can now browse through breaking news in various categories. For breaking news, Google says it uses some of the same technology as Search to populate the categories. From my tests, the breaking news stuff tended to look very similar to Google News in terms of content and ranking.
The nice part about the breaking news aspect is that it delivers sources that you might not already subscribe to. So if I want to see the most breaking news in Sports, I don't actually have to have all those sports sources n my feeds.
Google has already updated Currents for Android phones and tablets and says an iOS update is coming soon.
Have you used Google Currents or is Flipboard still your default social reader? Let us know in the comments.