Hands-On With Flipboard & Zite Competitor News.me [PICS]

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There's two big differences between News.me and existing competitors Flipboard and Zite: 1) It's designed to help users discover what the people they're following on Twitter are seeing in their own Twitter streams, rather than just what they're sharing -- a feature that, notably, only works if the users are also News.me users -- and 2) It's not free.

The app was developed at Betaworks, which also developed bit.ly, from a prototype developed by the New York Times Company (more on that here). Stories are ranked by relevance using bit.ly data.

The News.me app has some nice features. Users can use their fingers to expand the preview of a story before deciding to click through. They can also easily share content via email, Twitter and Facebook, and save content for later reading on Instapaper or News.me's own built-in equivalent. Those who don't have an iPad can use the service to get a daily email digest of news making the rounds on their Twitter feeds.

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And that's about it. It's not noticeably better than Flipboard (actually, it offers a lot less in terms of features), and it doesn't appear to be as intelligent as Zite. Also, it costs $0.99 per week, or $34.99 per year, after an initial free week; both Flipboard and Zite are free indefinitely.