YAPPER, the self-service tool for creating mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad Android and BlackBerry devices, has launched two full-featured mobile apps for news organizations today. One for Palo Alto Online and the other for West Seattle Herald, the apps combine mobile news distribution with engagement tools for a complete offering to clients.

Short for Your APP MakER, YAPPER is the brainchild of SachManya. The team earned early acclaim with its product launch earlier this year, winning the Best of Show award at 2010 Macworld DEMO. One of its key features is the built-in marketing tools YAPPER offers its clients, and rightly so with a starting price of $299 for its DIY services. For the print industry, shifting to the online world was difficult enough. Smart phones and social media sharing mechanisms have helped the print industry to find its niche, with a rising demand for self-serve tools like YAPPER.

A brief overview of how citizen journalism and social media sharing tools have been incorporated into the news mobile apps:

With 360News and simple registration the user is able to submit geo-aware stories, photos and videos to the news organization. Once approved, their story may appear on the news site, in the app as well as on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, 360News and CNNireport sites with credit going to the user. The applications also feature additional functionality including push notifications for breaking news or offers and much more. “The Palo Alto Online mobile application brings a level of interactivity and involvement to engage the community that goes beyond the functionality offered in most mobile news applications. Building the app with YAPPER was very affordable and we are planning to create more mobile apps for our other news properties,” said William S. Johnson President & CEO, Embarcadero Media.

It’s the inclusion of these user-driven tools that builds up the marketing potential around YAPPER, expanding the news distribution channel into a method of engaging the consumer. This is where YAPPER is looking to excel–a necessity in the rapidly expanding market for DIY mobile app makers. With Google launching its own app creation tool, the space is getting crowded for YAPPER, but the start-up’s appeal lies in its cross-platform approach.

Clients can create a single app and use it across all major mobile platforms. Their app metrics are aggregated for easier analysis, centralizing more than just the app creation tools. As we saw with Flipboard‘s launch earlier this week, there’s a growing demand around customized news content delivered on mobile devices. Taking advantage of these consumer trends, YAPPER is positioning itself in the center of that conversation exchange. From here, YAPPER could really flesh out its analytics offerings, creating a powerful recommendation data set and marketing opportunities for its clients as well.

As I’ve mentioned before, centralized tools for porting and analyzing app behavior on multiple platforms will be a profitable way to serve future business needs, even more so than what we saw with web apps. Mobile devices and platform standards still have a wide range, and will continue to do so for some time. The added ability to garner more specific consumer data will be great for YAPPER to eventually provide targeted features (for services and marketing as they become one and the same), and consumers will expect more personalized products as a result.