In the torrent of news, photos, thoughts, chatter and cat photos known as social media, there is some good stuff. It just usually requires you to be looking at the right moment, and be willing to spot the goodness among the Belieberness. Not pleasant. Nuzzel is a newish app (free; iOS/web) which aims to make this process a little swifter by cherry-picking news shared by your friends, and presenting it in a readable format.
The idea is that if many of your friends enjoy a story, you might too — but you might want to read it in a magazine format in your own time, rather than during your latest flying visit to Facebook at work. It’s not the first time this idea has been tried, but it is Nuzzel’s design, customization options, and ability to work with both Facebook and Twitter that makes it stand out.
After signing in to the two aforementioned networks, you get four separate streams to pick from. The first is news shared by your friends, the second is from friends of friends, the third is the best shared stuff you may have missed previously, and the fourth is a log of stories you’ve recently read. Each column can be ordered by time or number of shares, and restricted to a certain time period. Because the app is an extension of Nuzzel.com, you can also opt to receive what is a nicely constructed daily email digest.
Nuzzel is the first app of its kind that I’ve actually liked, and I think that has much to do with its Twitter compatibility. Whereas Facebook friends are often folks from our sports team or from the office, we generally follow people on Twitter because they interest us. As a result, the news they share is far more suited to our tastes and interests.
Add in a few nice integrations — Buffer, Pocket and Instapaper — and it totals a very nice little new browsing app.
Nuzzel is available to download free from the App Store
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