Storify, one of the best-known tools for creating narratives based on social media, announced the launch of its iPad application today, Mediabistro reported. The new app, which is available free on iTunes, is aimed at making on-the-go social media curation even easier than before.

Storify opened to the public less than a year ago, and it has since become well-used way for reporters to organise and present information drawn from social media. As online readers and social media users are faced with a constant flood of information, the need for curation - creating accessible narratives out of the social media content - is becoming increasingly acute.

The new iPad app offers the same basic functionalities as the Storify web app, with two major differences: the touch-enabled, "iPad-like" interface and the ability to send tweets from within the app.

Flipboard, an iPad app that curates weblinks from contacts on Facebook and Twitter, has just updated the app to introduce a content guide and LinkedIn integration.

The glossy new content guide is a visual way to search and browse content. It organizes publications by topics such as News, Entertainment, Travel, and Science. Users can navigate the guide to add publications to their feed, which is now unlimited (it was previously limited to 21). It also highlights popular stories based on how often users interact with them.

Gigoam points out that the new content guide is not generated by an algorithm. A Flipboard editor manually updates the guide with selected digital content, the type of editorial function that newspaper editors perform.

The LinkedIn integration allows users to see what their LinkedIn contacts are sharing, in addition to their Twitter and Facebook contacts. According to TechCrunch, the new feature is useful to allow people to read industry news and brush up on talking points before meetings.

As a platform, Twitter has become a tremendously useful tool for disseminating information, sometimes being essential in circumventing restrictions on free speech. Its democratic nature makes it possible for any piece of information to be distributed. And as Twitter is used more and more as a news source, it is also becoming the go-to source for information on breaking news. The first news of Osama bin Laden's death, to give a recent example, was first posted on Twitter.

What can be a problem is that Twitter does not have a mechanism to verify the veracity of the information transmitted on it. There is no editorial framework, which makes it possible for any information - or disinformation - to take off and become a trend.

For this reason, AdAge's Simon Dumenco suggested that Twitter create a way to direct its users to most reliable sources of information. In his view, a community of some kind could be tasked with evaluating sources according to their importance, which would make it easier for users to identify trustworthy information.