Pressly Goes DIY: Will Turn Tumblr, WordPress & Twitter Into Touch-Friendly Websites

Following its November debut, HTML5 publishing platform (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalistPressly, is preparing to launch its self-serve platform for bloggers. Planned to go live this spring, the platform will allow publishers of any kind – big or small –  to transform their WordPress sites, Tumblr blogs, Twitter updates and other social feeds into tablet and touch-friendly sites that work on the iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, BlackBerry PlayBook and Android tablets.

Until now, Pressly has been focused on bringing in major publications to its platform, and has signed up The Toronto Star, The Economist Group, plus a yet-to-launch NBC property, and an unnamed Canadian news site. Meanwhile, well-funded competitor OnSwipe, launched in June 2011, also has a few big names on its platform, including Marie Claire, Ryan Seacrest and Hollywood.com, to name a few, as well as popular tech reads like BetaBeat, TNW, Geek.com and PSFK.

With Pressly’s impending self-serve launch, the platform will be more on par with OnSwipe, which currently offers both a self-serve dashboard and WordPress plugin for making DIY iPad-friendly versions of sites and social feeds. However, unlike OnSwipe, Pressly aims to differentiate itself by offering its service across multiple tablet platforms (not just iPad – see above) as well as by offering support for the iPhone. If you’ve used FlipBoard on the iPhone, then you know that the swipe-and-flip metaphor doesn’t only work on large tablet screens.

In addition, Pressly offers a number of pre-built templates and additional customization options, if you want something with less of an “out of the box” look and feel.

The self-serve option will be a limited rollout initially, with just a few hundred bloggers allowed in at first. The sign up form is here, but Pressly is doing that manufactured word-of-mouth thing (which seems increasingly common, sigh) where you have share links to get bumped up on the invite list. Sorry about that. (It’s still a good product though.)