Flipboard is a great concept: Scrape the content from all the feeds you care about -- Facebook, Twitter, RSS and others -- then mix it together and dress it up so it looks great on a tablet or smartphone. There are a few apps trying to apply the same concept for video, including Vodio, which just launched its iPhone app (the iPad version launched in January).
The weakness of the direct Flipboard analogy is that the majority of the content we see or share on various networks isn't video. Vodio gets around this in a couple of ways. First, it organizes content into various channels (Tech, Entertainment, News, etc.) so you can better find what you like, in addition to providing dedicated channels for video in your feeds from Facebook and Twitter.
[More from Mashable: Lapka Turns Your Phone Into an Organic Food Monitor [VIDEO]]
The second way is new and much more interesting. Vodio now has a Highlights channel, which harvests vids from around the web that it thinks you might like, learning from your Facebook and Twitter feeds as well as your viewing habits as it goes along. It also provides Pandora-like thumbs-ups and thumbs-downs that will help it suss your tastes.
It's all opt-in, of course, and it starts working as soon as you log in and pick some channels to follow. Shortly after firing up the Vodio app for the first time, my Highlights feed was full of stuff that I was interested in watching, although a few (how did that "50 Cent interviewed by Perez Hilton" get in there?) were somewhat off the mark. Vodio only imports videos from specific sites, so there's virtually no chance of a porn vid slipping in there.
[More from Mashable: Ben & Jerry’s App Uncovers Hidden Connections With Facebook Friends]
Vodio makes it easy to share whatever you're watching with a couple of taps, and it has a nice Watch Later function, too (nothing plays without a network connection, though, so it's not as handy as you'd like).
Vodio is a free app, and it doesn't add any kind of ads to any of the videos it harvests. So how, then, does it make money? Its creator, Jonathan Messika, says he hopes to follow the Flipboard model of working with content partners. For example, Vodio could partner with Hulu to serve up the latter's video content for a cut of the ad revenue.
That would depend on Vodio establishing a large user base, however, and that could take a while. But its clean, intuitive interface has a lot going for it.
What do you think of Vodio? Is it something you'd use? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, unizyne
This story originally published on Mashable here.