Trapit, the news aggregator from the creators of Siri that launched just last year, gains a Yahoo veteran as their chief content officer.

Liz Lufkin served as Yahoo’s VP of frontpage programming for many years before she was ousted last September due to the company’s reorganization.  Her role at Yahoo was critical, as her work was the first thing you see when visiting the site.  Her job was to make the front page of Yahoo appealing to readers.

Now, Lufkin’s new role is a lot tougher since she has to make Trapit competitive.

“Trapit is tiny, but the real challenge for Lufkin and the start-up isn’t the company’s size,” reads a report from AllThingsD.  “It’s the competition: There are roughly one gazillion services that say they will filter the Internet’s endless waves of stories into something personalized and manageable. Some, like Google news, use unfathomable algorithms, like Google news; others, like News.me, say they do it using social cues from your Twitter and Facebook feeds.”

The edge

Though there are many news aggregators available these days, what makes Trapit unique is that “it is built on the bones of  a DARPA-funded artificial technology project.”  It is not focused on the social aspect of the Web, but people react to the real-time content found on their service and with time, better develop it based on how people perceive it.
Trapit is said to be releasing their iPad app next month to increase their userbase.

Additional role

Aside from beautifying Trapit and making sure content is of high quality, Lufkin will also be working with Amra Tareen, Trapit’s new business developer, to build the business side of the company.  The two will be working on creating partnerships with publishers to help them sell subscriptions or a la carte articles.