Blekko announced today that it is now powering RSS search for the popular iPad app Flipboard. The functionality is designed to weed out spam as blekko’s slashtag method of searching does, so Flipboard users can discover good content based on keywords.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity to partner with a great brand and an outstanding product that delivers such an awesome experience for its readers,” commented blekko CEO Rich Skrenta. “We hope we can make the experience even better by pointing Flipboard readers to the absolute best sources of content via RSS feeds on any topic, without spam.”
“Flipboard’s goal is to bring everything that you care about together into one place,” says Flipboard co-founder Evan Doll. “By adding blekko’s RSS search to Flipboard, you can now also find your favorite RSS feeds and enjoy them in a beautiful visual format within your social magazine.”
Blekko has been pretty busy. A couple weeks ago, the company announced that it was powering search on local news site Topix (which Skrenta co-founded). Since then, they announced new privacy features, including a 48-hour data retention policy.
Partnerships with other widely used sites and apps could be just what blekko needs to really gain some exposure and ground in the search space. It will be interesting to see what other companies partner with blekko going forward.
Even Google’s Matt Cutts is encouraging users to check the search engine out, saying that the competition helps keep Google on its toes. I don’t think Google is really on its toes too much because of blekko at this point (Bing might be a slightly different story), but blekko has only been around for a little more than half a year.