Last night as I was going through Reeder and Pulse News apps at the same time on my iPad, I made a simple observation to myself. The apps that allow me to visit the web through their app are more likely to be used by me. EW Must List app does this when linking out. Basically there’s a back button that is inside the frame as this screenshot notes. However as I kept bouncing on my rss iPad feed readers the back button really didn’t exist. It was the close button that kept popping up. That lead me to this tweet and the following responses.

First off—sorry for the messy backgrounds of the tweet embeds but I didn’t feel like taking a screen shot of each comment. What I’m trying to note for myself with the close button on an app is that it is quite different from the normal web and linking stuff that a browser allows. Typically it would be a pop up. For an app it is a close button. It gives the sense of leaving the app while in effect it is pulling content in as opposed to sending someone away. It should also be noted that typically if there’s a close button, on the opposite side of the bar is a button that either allows you to share the info with a tweet or open it in Safari.