These are busy days for the industry of personalized news.

On Wednesday, April 21st the Washington Post launched its news aggregation site Trove, and on Thursday, April 22nd the New York Times launched its news aggregation iPad app, News.me.

Peter Kafka from MediaMemo reported previously this week that the app's website had been updated with new information and a "coming soon" announcement, and that the app was getting ready to launch.

News.me's aim is to provide filtered and personalized social news streams to users. Other apps exist with the same purpose, like Zite and Flipboard.

Even though they have more or less the same goal, they differ in some aspects.

News.me

News.me is a newsfeed, built by Betaworks in collaboration with The New York Times R&D Lab, which monitors what people are reading. In doing so, it learns what they like to read, New York Times's blog Bits reported.

It aggregates and filters news from a wide variety of sources, but pays a licensing fee to official media partners in return for use of their content, Poynter reported. It basically reformats the article to give users the "best reading experience".

For using News.me, users need an iPad and a Twitter account. Through these social media platforms, it determines which news articles and subjects users are interested in, repackaging them in an appealing iPad layout.

Among the first publishers on board, according to Poynter, are the Times and The Boston Globe, as well as the Associated Press, Forbes and Fast Company. Digital-only outlets are also involved, including AOL News, Gawker, GigaOm, Mashable, RedWriteWeb and SB Nation.

The app features partner content, but according to the company, other media sources will also be aggregated. However, only partners will receive a revenue share, enhanced presentation options and in-app promotional opportunities.

As Mashable reported, "The two big differences between News.me and existing competitors Flipboard and Zite are: 1) It's designed to help users discover what the people they're following on Twitter are seeing in their own Twitter streams, rather than just what they're sharing -- a feature that, notably, only works if the users are also News.me users -- and 2) It's not free." In fact, it costs $0.99 a week or $43.99 a year.

Another advantage of News.me over its competitors is that the service relies heavily on Bit.ly. This popular link-shortening service developed in-house by Betaworks tracks which links are shared most widely around the Web, Bits reported.

As Mathew Ingram of GigaOm noted (via NYT), News.me as well as Trove have a traditional media pedigree to some extent, even though they are both startups, because they are related to news media: the NYT and the Washington Post, respectively.

Flipboard

Flipboard, through social network's accounts like Facebook and Twitter, transforms the articles shared in a glossy, magazine layout.

In December eight publihsers worked with the company to design layouts that make reading their existing online stories more visually attractive and easier to be immersed in. When users click on articles,they are sent to the source site in order to read the full story.

However, talking about the app and the challenges it poses to publishers, Frédéric Filloux said, "Flipboard is THE product any big media company or, better, any group of media companies should have invented".

It is free to download. As it was previously noted, "Can an app that is free on iTunes and has no current ad service become profitable? While skeptics have said no, Filloux disagreed. Its access to social media accounts gives Flipboard inside information on individual reader that will make it the perfect platform for targeted advertisement for users".

Zite

It is an iPad application that gathers articles from media outlets all over the Internet and reformats them, putting everything in a personalized magazine format.

The main difference with the other two is that Zite doesn't partner with publishers. Major news organizations sent it a cease-and-desist letter accusing Zite of "stealing" their content as publishers don't receive any benefits from the fact Zite uses their content.

The race for the best personalize news app is still being run.

Sources: MediaMemo, Poynter, Mashable, NYT's Bits, NYT