Today my colleague Max Bulger announced a new Wildcard plugin for WordPress that effectively publishes the content of your WordPress blog into our native iOS app. I previously did this for Subtraction.com using somewhat manual means (and leveraging the fact that I work at Wildcard), but this new plugin makes the process much more straightforward, and removes the requirement that you have to, like, know someone at the company to get this done.

This plugin is a part of a big initiative you’ll see this year that Wildcard is undertaking to help brands, publishers and merchants of all different sizes transform their content into cards and push those cards into our app. For WordPress, particularly, it’s a big step forward in demonstrating the viability of a “third way” for mobile publishing. As Max puts it:

We believe there is a false dichotomy facing WordPress publishers: make the significant investment in developing a native application (or many, if you consider Android and iOS fragmentation), or be content with merely publishing to the mobile web while native app usage continues to skyrocket…We believe that cards represent a third possibility for mobile publishing that combines the best of both worlds. They provide app-like user experience with the share-ability of a link or web page. Wildcard is dedicated to making it easier to publish cards, and easier for bloggers to transition from the web to mobile. Distributing content via cards makes it easier for WordPress users to focus on what matters: their content.

You can grab the plugin at wordpress.org, and read more about it at blog.trywildcard.com.