‘Trove’ iOS News App Makes You a Curator

This just in: Another free news-aggregation app is now available for iOS. Released Wednesday, Trove was developed by the former WaPo Labs. (WaPo is an abbreviation of Washington Post). It’s a social news reader app, and I really like it—especially on the iPad. But it won’t be my go-to app for a quick news fix.

Once you install Trove, you pick at least three “troves,” or news topics, to get started. Each trove serves the latest articles on that topic, culled from sources such as The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, UPI, and Chicago Tribune.

The idea behind Trove is to turn you, the reader, into a news curator. You’re encouraged to curate your own topics, and it’s extremely easy to do so. A few high-profile people are already serving as curators, including Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn, who curates the “Farm to Table” trove. Anyone can create a trove, and any Trove user can follow it.

You can also share stories you discover in Trove on Facebook and Twitter. When you connect those social media accounts to your Trove account, the app serves stories it thinks you’ll want to read based on topics you discuss or follow on those networks.

Though Trove looks good on an iPhone or iPod touch, it really comes to life on an iPad. The extra screen space makes navigating to your troves, and discovering related troves, much easier.

Trove isn’t the only app that’s developing its own social network, of course. Instagram is the granddaddy in this category, and other recent app/networks include N3twork (iOS) and Vine (Android and iOS). And by no means is Trove the only iOS news-aggregator app; there are too many to name here.

How you feel about Trove depends on how much of a commitment you want to make to reading news. If news is a passion, you’ll probably love Trove and enjoy being one of its curators. But if you’re just looking for a quick fix on breaking news, I recommend Circa (free; for iOS and Android) or Yahoo! News Digest (iOS). Both provide some context along with their bite-sized news summaries.