Flud Retools Design for Metro, Bringing Social News to Windows Phone

Marti posted a brief review of Flud earlier but they also sent me over the official PR and a couple pictures for it to share with you. I personally haven’t tried it yet but I’m going to soon hopefully, I just want to see what all of the fuss is about. So here’s the PR so you can learn more about it and then go back and read Marti’s review for a hands-on look at it.

Flud debuted the first social and next-generation mobile news reader on iOS in December and now brings the Flud news reading application to Windows Phone. In anticipation of becoming a fully cross-platform news ecosystem, Flud brought social news to Android last week and furthers this initiative with the launch on Windows Phone. Flud’s award-winning interface was rebuilt to take full advantage of Metro UI and repurposes the best of Flud’s social news experience into an application that is truly native to Windows Phone.
"The Flud platform looks like it belongs to the Windows OS … it looks and feels like it came prepackaged with your phone," Bobby Ghoshal, CEO and co-founder of Flud, said. "We worked very closely with the Windows Phone team, starting with wireframes all the way down to the final line of code."
With Windows as its latest OS, the Flud platform is rapidly moving to scale, in accordance with its goal to become the news reader of choice. Continued support and guidance from the Microsoft team enabled Flud to move cross platform very quickly. Microsoft selected Flud for its Mobile Acceleration Week where Flud was given hands-on support and training to develop a noteworthy application optimized for the Windows Phone platform. As one of the first mainstream applications to develop for Windows, Flud hopes to set a precedent in the design economy of the Windows Phone marketplace.
Flud’s social newsreader is the first of its kind, allowing users to follow other users and endorse, or “Flud” the best articles for one another. Communities are formed around content, and the best content from publishers is amplified inside the Flud ecosystem as it is re-Fluded through intimate, personal networks focused on news. The Flud Stream is free of the social chatter that defines other platforms to feature quality stories and articles. Flud’s partner publishers are given a tool to broaden the reach of their content and gauge virality.
More about the social features:

• The Flud Stream: This is the top news of the day. A real-time feed of the stories and articles endorsed by the people a Fluder is following. This is a place for social news discovery.
• Flud Profiles: Here is where to find a Fluders most read sources, their Fluded stories, articles added to their Reading List, followers and following, as well as current city. It is a snapshot of their “news personality.”
• The Flud Bookmarklet: Allows users to Flud and tweet their favorite articles straight from the web, save interesting headlines to the Reading List for later in app reading and it syncs seamlessly with any Flud mobile application.

As the first true social news reader, Flud offers social features not found anywhere else. Flud continues to introduce new ways of creating intimate, meaningful bonds between users through content sharing and discovery; all of which will eventually be available to Fluders across more platforms and devices. "We are working on a Windows 8 application,” Ghoshal said. “It’s a different use case, but with the bigger screen real estate, it already looks stunning."
With its visual interface, Flud is poised to become a leading applications on Windows. The company is inspired to have this interaction with the team at Microsoft and will continue to build upon all improvements Microsoft makes to the Windows Phone platform.
About Flud
Founded in October 2010, Flud is a new kind of social news reader. The company is redefining the relationship between people and content. Flud for iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone allows users to discover, consume and amplify interesting news content. The mobile application was named Best UI Design of 2010 by Fast Company. The company received funding from Detroit Venture Partners and Ludlow Ventures. Flud is privately held and is headquartered in San Diego, with an office in downtown Detroit.