Taptu scores $3.5M to build Tapform news DJ app platform

News DJ app company Taptu announced today it will soon let anyone build their own apps using its news mixing engine, thanks to a  €2.5 million ($3.5 million) second round of funding from DFJ Esprit and Sofinnova.

The move makes sense for Taptu, since powering other people’s apps is its next logical step after finding success with its own news DJ apps on the iPhone, iPad and Android (including both phones and tablets). Anyone will be able to use the company’s Tapform to create their own social news aggregator apps, or even more intriguingly, add news aggregation capabilities to existing apps.

“With Tapform we are opening our technology, allowing other companies and media entities to incorporate features that make Taptu a hit,” CEO Mitch Lazar said in a statement today.

Formerly a mobile search company, Taptu pivoted into news reading apps last year. But it wasn’t until the company added its news DJ feature, which lets users search and mix their news streams to their liking, that it truly began to differentiate itself from competitors like Pulse and FlipBoard.

While it’s already not that difficult for publishers to create simple news reading apps based on RSS feeds, Tapform will allow them to gain access to Taptu’s proprietary APIs to create attractive looking streams of content based on content from blogs and websites as well. For publishers, it could serve as an easy way to show off their choice content while also mixing in stories from other sources.

The company says that it will continue to further improve its other mobile apps with the addition of new features like video, user accounts, and search streams based on keywords. Taptu is also planning to launch an HTML5 web app that will let users get access to their news streams on desktop computers as well.

Taptu is based in Cambridge, England and Denver, Colorado. The company has previously raised around $15 million in funding.