[App Fridays] Glipho's social blogging comes to mobile

Glipho is not so well known in India, but in other parts of the western world, they've brought about this interesting concept called social blogging. Glipho is a platform for a community of bloggers, and users can come on to the platform and follow popular bloggers in the categories that interest them.

They've recently opened their platform to the Indian audience and I must say, they've got a neat app. Glipho's mobile app is a content reader app. While the app only works for Glipho users, it's quite a neat news reader app and gives you an alternate source of content to read from, which I think is an interesting proposition.

So should you take the trouble of becoming a Glipho user? Here's what we think -

What is it about?

While signing up on Glipho, you can select top bloggers under categories, like business, music, technology etc and Glipho will create a stream for you. This is presented to you, a first time user, when you log into Glipho's mobile app. The categories that you were presented on the desktop site are also available to you and you can view stories under each of these categories on the mobile site as well.As a reader, Glipho has employed a Google Now sort of card layout. Each card is a vertical rectangle, which consists of a heading, featured image and an excerpt. Upon clicking the rectangle, you're shown the article, with bottom most part of the screen is a small bar persisting with the author's name. There's a "drop-up" menu when you click this bar, where you can like, comment or share.

You cannot write blogs on the Glipho app.Is there a need for alternate content?

I think so. A blog doesn't have to adhere to the principles of a platform and the opinions and content that you get on a blog (barring a few exceptions) are authentic. Glipho is trying to bring this content onto one consolidated platform. It's almost like organizing a space.

Now on the mobile space, other than some RSS readers, there isn't an app that provides users with this kind of alternate content. You can replicate the reading experience of Glipho from a good RSS reader, but a Glipho provides a much better user experience and the authors are recommended, giving a chance for you to discover new content that you might not end up not liking.

Pros and cons Glipho's mobile app is a good reader app. The content on the news reader can be curated according to your liking and at the same time, all available content on the platform is available to view as well. Barring some cases, the app is quick and responsive and has made effective use of the screen real estate.

On the cons, despite running on a high speed internet connect, the app sometimes takes its own sweet time to load, especially in the categories section. Also, in the reader section, the font sizes are slightly small and a zoom or font resizing option will be most useful.

Other than these, it's quite a robust app.

Our Take

With apps like Flipboard and Pulse, which bring large publications on one platform, the smaller blogs were perhaps lost. More so on the mobile platform. Glipho is a great solution for this problem and now it's a question of getting enough content on the site.As far as the app is concerned, it's a good one, and if your favourite bloggers are on Glipho or you want to find new alternate content to read, you should give it a try.

Download Glipho for your Android here.