Zite Makes the Jump to iPhone

In a week that has seen news of Flipboard and Google Currents both coming to the iPhone, popular news personalization app Zite (iTunes link) completes the trifecta today by releasing its own iPhone version.

Zite debuted in March with an iPad app that delivered personalized news. The app allowed users to input their preferences, as well as their Twitter, Google Reader, and Read It Later accounts, then used that data to craft a news homepage tailored to their interests. The app delivers users a collection of news stories it thinks they will like and, in Pandora-like fashion, gives them the option to like or dislike stories. It incorporates users’ preferences and learns from them, in order to bring users more of the kinds of stories they want to see, and fewer of those they don’t. It also provides users a variety of sharing options, so they can post stories to Twitter, Facebook, and more.

The app is universal, which means it will run on both iPhone and iPad without the need to download separate apps. More importantly, it allows users to set up a profile, so that those who have been using the iPad app since March can transfer their preferences to the iPhone version without having to re-train the app.

The company took to Twitter and its blog to announce the release today.

The release of the iPhone app comes on the same day as the news that Zite for iPad was selected as a top news app in the Apple Rewind 2011 roundup, which listed of the top music, movies, and apps in the iTunes store for 2011.

CNN announced in August that it was acquiring Zite for an undisclosed amount, but that it intended to leave the 8-person startup to run itself as a standalone company.

What do you think of Zite? Let us know in the comments.