HTC opens BlinkFeed to developers with new SDK

With the HTC One (M8) HTCmade it clear it’s not giving up on BlinkFeed, and in fact it wants to make it stronger but opening the service up to developers.

Along with the announcement of the new flagship phone today HTCrevealed that it is releasing an SDK for BlinkFeed that will let developers add their content and services to the feature. Soon users of any recent HTCdevice will be able to see content from a variety of services on BlinkFeed, assuming developers built out support for it.

The first two companies to support the new BlinkFeed are Fitbit and Foursquare. Fitbit will show you how many steps you’ve taken so far that day in the feed. You don’t even need a Fitbit device to get data from the app, the always-on sensors in the HTCOne (M8) can count your steps just like the iPhone 5s can. Owners of last year’s HTC One will still need a fitness tracker to get the data to show up in their BlinkFeed.

Foursquare will be able to surface ideas for places to go based on your location and the time of day. For example, around noontime the service will push lunch recommendations to BlinkFeed.

With the new SDK BlinkFeed can become a much more useful feature in Sense 6. We just have to wait and see what developers other decide to support the feature.

What apps and services would you like to see in the new BlinkFeed?