Shyftr Gets More Social, Showing Who Reads Feeds You Do

One of my positions I've long held from my RSS bully pulpit is that rather than viewing feeds alone, and sharing to a mystery audience, I'd like to know if my friends are subscribed to the same feeds I am, if they've read articles before I have, and if they liked them. This wisdom of crowds theory helps me discover not only new sources for news, but also new peers I may not have known I had.

Yesterday, Shyftr, a next-generation social RSS reader, took another important step toward fulfilling this vision, following in the footsteps of fellow innovators Toluu and Assetbar.

Now, while you read your feeds in Shyftr, a rectangular box at the top right of the feed shows up to twenty avatars of fellow users who also read the feed. If the feed is not popular, all avatars will be shown, while if the feed has more than twenty followers, a random sample will be selected.

Clicking on any of the avatars leads to the user's profile.

Shyftr's Matt Shaulis asked on Twitter yesterday, "Ever wonder who else was reading the same feeds as you?"

Now I know. In fact, as a gradual student of these avatars I've seen used everywhere from MyBlogLog to BlogCatalog, Twitter, FriendFeed and elsewhere, I'm eerily able to recognize avatars, even of people I've never met. Just this morning, after looking at the avatars in Shyftr, I learned that Chris Miller of IdoNotes reads ReadWriteWeb, as does LiveCrunch.

Additional good news for Shyftr comes from the aforementioned Toluu today. Caleb Elston helpfully added Shyftr as a feed reader option in the open OPML sharing and matching site, letting users of both services add feeds to Shyftr with one click through his custom bookmarklet. (See: Shyftr: Our latest feed reader option)


Toluu has integrated Shyftr as a feed reader option
There is definitely a market for social RSS feed readers that let users find what other peers are reading, sharing and commenting on. Shyftr is methodically hitting all the key points one by one, rather than overwhelming users with feature overkill. I know I'll be clicking through these new avatars to see if there are even more peers whom I should know.

Content Filters Proving Evasive for RSS, Social Media Sites

Whether it be RSS feeds, social networks, or one of the many social media aggregation sites, it's no surprise that even your closest peers are sharing data they care about that you just don't. But so far, despite many users calling for content-based filters, solutions to block keywords or topics are missing from the vast majority of information spigots. In fact, I can't think of a single one I use that's gotten the formula right.

Not to overly repeat myself, but one of the major hopes I had for Google Reader last year was that they would add what I called "Negative Keywords", which would let me block specific posts from people I had subscribed to, be they off-topic posts on politics, family and sports, arrays of links from del.icio.us, or their latest cause du jour.

As the 2008 election season is heating up, it's no surprise that even the most geeky of tech news sources are starting to give some coverage to Obama vs. Clinton or Obama vs. McCain, and it will only increase over time. If I so chose, why couldn't I ask Twitter or Google Reader or FriendFeed to preemptively hide updates that included keywords like "Clinton", "Obama" or "McCain"? Today, I can't do that in any of those services, so far as I know.

Taking things further, I've also at times been tantalized by the idea of a "nuclear option" for the Web, where if I so chose, I could eradicate the mentioning of a keyword of any kind from all activity.

On Wednesday, Robert Scoble said “I wish when you blocked someone on Twitter they disappeared from Google Talk too.” Makes sense. But what if you had a button that not only blocked the person, but also, any mention of the person, from all social media services, by using their own name as the negative keyword? What if they were even automatically filtered out of Google searches, blocked just like profanity and pornography are from decency filters?

Google Reader hasn't yet debuted negative keywords. So Mahalo fans still get updates on Jason Calacanis' bulldogs and "fatblogging" and followers of this blog will still get summaries of Oakland A's games I attend. While I can always unsubscribe from somebody, there's got to be a safer middle ground in the social media and RSS space that lets me get the content I'm looking for, and not the content I'm not. Do you know of a service that's got negative keywords nailed?

I Am a Google Reader Shared Links Ninja

On March 3rd of 2007, I made a list of 10 suggestions to the Google Reader team on how they could make the world's most popular feed reader even better. The tenth option was a simple one, which I titled as "Customization Everywhere", where I said "there's zero options to customize a shared link blog." As of today, only 14 months later, we now have the first user customizable options to make the shared items page a little more fancy. And today, I can profess myself a ninja.

Alongside the so far much-criticized announcement that you can append notes to Google Reader shared items, you can also choose from four artistic styles on the shared items page, including the Default, as boring as it sounds, Ice Cream, Sea, and ... Ninjas.

Seeing how episode 7 of the Elite Tech News podcast was titled "Explanatory Ninjas", it makes sense that at least for today, I would use the theme of "Ninja".

(See my Ninja-Themed Shared Items Blog)

By selecting Ninja, all that's really added is a cute banner at the top of my shared items page, showing four ninjas and their various weapons. It's not necessarily a status symbol, showing my link sharing prowess or skills with the black arts. The theme is cute, but of course, non-functional. I still can't change the color of the background, or the fonts, or go "all MySpace" with the page, so I guess that's good. But it's a start.

Of note: I was lucky enough to meet and talk with Chris Wetherell of the Google Reader team last Thursday for lunch. We didn't talk about this feature, but I remain very positive on the direction and focus the Google Reader team has going forward. It's a small team, but very dedicated.

Shyftr Adds OPML Support To Intriguing RSS Feed Reader

With RSS becoming ubiquitous now, it is not uncommon for Web power users to have hundreds or even thousands of individual RSS feed subcriptions, covering anything from sports to technology, news and blogs of friends and family. But adding these feeds one by one to a new feed reader is simply out of the question. It takes too long. That's why the majority of RSS feed readers, both online and off, have moved to support OPML, enabling the portability of both your feeds and your folders.

Today, Shyftr, an online feed reader that lets you share comments within the Shyftr community and learn what are the most popular feeds and items, added this crucial capability, making them a stronger competitor to other market leaders, such as Google Reader, BlogLines and NewsGator. (See the official post: OPML Support Is Here!)

Shyftr first caught my attention earlier this year, when I highlighted their integrated comments system and blog rankings. (See: Shyftr Offers Social RSS Reading, Including Comments, Rankings) But at the time, I had no choice but to highlight their lack of OPML, a real sticking point for me. Later in March, Shyftr added pocket blogs, much like Google Reader's shared links blog.

You might also remember that last month, the Shyftr team was engaged in some controversy over their practice of displaying full feed items and comments away from the original blog, a position from which they later relented, following criticism. While I didn't have any issues at all with what they were doing, others did, and Shyftr was smart to quickly adjust.


Like with other RSS feed readers, adding OPML to Shyftr is very simple. Just export your OPML from your existing reader, and from your Shyftr Profile, click the "+" button under Feeds to add new items. Once you upload your OPML file, Shyftr will then keep you updated as to its progress, first by laying out the specified folder hierarchy, and second, showing how many feeds have been imported.


For somebody like me, this process can take several minutes. It's not the fastest OPML import I've ever seen, but it definitely works. Just make sure you don't close the browser window while it's operating.


What I liked best about Shyftr's implementation is that the system automatically recognized if I had already manually entered a feed. If I had, it would correctly move that feed, which was duplicated, into the folder specified by my OPML file. I was at first worried I would have to manually move each duplicated feed, but it took care of the hard work for me. (That also explains why in the above graphic, the total number of feeds imported is less than the number processed)

With the addition of OPML, Shyftr has many of the major checkboxes for next generation RSS feed readers nailed. They have online feed reading. They have user profiles. They have comments. They have popularity rankings. They have a personalized link blog. Just about the only thing that Google Reader and others have that they don't yet is keyboard navigation through feeds. If they can manage to get that nailed, Shyftr could be even more compelling than it already is today. It has been fun to watch the team go from pet project to serious RSS feed reader alternative in the space of a few months, and I expect that adding OPML is just the beginning.

Participate. Participate. Participate. Repeat.

Some of the most confused buzzwords in Web 2.0 are those of aggregation and lifestreaming.

As evidenced by the many different sites that have debuted offering a single location for differing online activities, harnessing together RSS feeds from Web services and presenting them as one, delivering a base foundation for aggregation is not all that hard.

Plaxo did it. Profilactic did it. Iminta did it. Socialthing did it. FriendFeed did it. Facebook is starting to do it.

But simple aggregation is not enough. What FriendFeed got right very early on in the game is that it's one thing to get all the services in one page, and quite another to make them interactive, so friends can talk to friends and peers can show peers what they like. Back in November, I wrote, "I first became interested in FriendFeed as the service could aggregate friends' Web activity in a single place. But in recent weeks, it's grown to be much more."

FriendFeed became more because of two things: participation and discovery.

FriendFeed let me respond and interact with the services my friends were sharing. It also allowed me to discover new services, new friends and new sources for information. Through FriendFeed, I've found new blogs to read, found new online social circles, and engaged in real-time with people who are completely unreachable, even by e-mail or Twitter.

Now, as the early adopter crowd has found the FriendFeed religion, despite the occasional grumpy holdout, they're now finding that the real potential in FriendFeed, as with other Web services, comes through participation. It's one thing to passively aggregate your online activity in a single place, and quite another to thoughtfully add comments and like items you find interesting, and think your friends will. Robert Scoble, now as prominent a FriendFeed advocate as I ever have been, has highlighted this factor in The really interesting FriendFeed page to watch tonight, where he notes FriendFeed has set up separate "discussion" pages that aggregate comments and likes. (His | Mine)

Google Reader became the leading RSS feed reader for me not just because it was a strong, quick, offering, but because of the shared link items blog. Twitter is actually useful due to tracking of @Replies and the ability to see others streams intermingled. But to sign up to any of these services to broadcast, and not to participate, shortchanges the process.

There's a reason I've made more than 1,200 comments in FriendFeed since signing up in October, and why I've "Liked" almost 700 different items. It's not because I have a bot set up to do my dirty work. It's because it helps both those I follow, and those who follow me. Take away that participation, and FriendFeed becomes as quiet as a library, and just about as exciting.

So if you're not quite sure where to start with FriendFeed, with Google Reader, with Twitter or any other social network, get started and participate. That'll make all the difference.

My Social Media Consumption Workflow

Amidst watching some talk about how they are reducing time in Google Reader due to information overload, or switching away from one service for another, whether due to its features, the friends, the noise or the content, I've been thinking a bit about how I consume social media, and specifically, the order of how I do it, to be sure I've caught up on everything quickly.

There's no question the amount of information I consume can be daunting. Glancing quickly, as of this morning:

1) I have 270 RSS subscriptions in Google Reader, sending between 500 and 800 items a day.
2) I follow 490 Twitter users.
3) I am subscribed to 269 FriendFeed users.
4) I have 210 Facebook "friends".

On the back of all this information coming this direction, I am pushing out information:

1) Posting one or two items here daily (1,300 so far)
2) Updating people on Twitter (334 updates so far)
3) Comments and Likes on FriendFeed (1,135 and 643 respectively)

In addition, there are a number of ways to engage and act on the data.

1) Adding bookmarks to Del.icio.us (630 so far)
2) Tracking activity via Technorati and Google Blog Search
3) Tracking comments here and elsewhere via Disqus
4) Trading e-mail with readers, entrepreneurs and peers

Add the above to a way a typical non-robot views the Web, including viewing news, sports and entertainment, not to mention everything to go with work and family obligations, and it can be hard to know where to start. While there's no question I'll vary from this process from time to time, below is a good idea of how I start the day in social media.


1) It always starts with e-mail. E-mail helps me know what's actionable. From e-mail, I can find out and act on:
a) New Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook connections
b) Direct Messages from Twitter
c) New comments on the blog via Disqus
d) If Google Blog Search has uncovered references to the blog
e) If there are conversations about upcoming posts or new services to check out.

When e-mail activity is completed, I open the Web browser. While FriendFeed is my home page, I usually leave it on the first visit of the day, and head to Google Reader, to rapidly consume the Web.

2) Reading Google Reader, I can catch up on the night's blog posts, add items to my link blog, or open posts in a new tab to bookmark or comment.

3) I'll open Twitter and do a quick scan of the first few pages of "tweets" from those I'm following to see what the discussions of the day are. I'll also check the replies tab to see if anybody tried to send me a message where action is required.

4) I head to FriendFeed.

Why is FriendFeed last in this order? It's because unlike the first three, which feel like work, where there is an action that needs to take place, or a task that needs clearing, FriendFeed is more like the finish line, where I can finally relax and engage with peers. I don't necessarily want to be rushed when I'm on FriendFeed, but can take time to see what others have done throughout the Web, make comments and respond to others who have commented on my own activity.

Also, visiting FriendFeed last here means that my feed is "properly" filled, with shared items from Google Reader, bookmarked items from Del.icio.us, any updates on Twitter, etc.

5) Additional activity

All other social media activity is optional, and comes when it makes sense. That would include:
a) Submitting items to the Elite News Tech Reddit
b) Digging items from the Upcoming list of Digg's Technology section
c) Visiting Shyftr and posting comments or responding to conversations.
d) Seeing what's popular on LinkRiver, ReadBurner or RSSMeme.
e) Checking trends and news on TechMeme and the TechMeme River.

Everybody has their own route to how they consume and act upon social media. This is how I tend to do it, so I feel I'm on top of things. Am I doing it wrong? How do you go about your social media workday?

You Can Only Pitch Me In Reverse Polish Notation or Pig Latin

As the world of journalism/old media gets increasingly blurred with bloggers/new media, some of the larger news-breaking bloggers are finding themselves inundated with pitches from companies looking for additional exposure. In an effort for some top bloggers to reduce the total noise sent their way, some are spelling out the right way and the wrong way to pitch them. But for any company looking to make a name for themselves, how can they possibly remember who wants to be communicated how?

Take a look at some of the more high-profile bloggers who have, at one point or another, said there is one approved way to get their attention:

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Stowe Boyd of /Message writes Via Twitter, "The Only Approved Way To Pitch Me" is via TwitPitch.


On his blog, he writes, in Twitpitch Is The Future, "Companies will be directed to this page to get the idea, and those that try to stick with the bulging email approach will suffer a three-strikes-and-you're-out rule: After three times of being warned, they go into the spam category."

Upside to him: Less e-mail, more clarity on whether something is being sent his way to write about.

Downside to the company: Their pitch is visible to everyone, making it clear they are shilling, and exclusivity is eliminated.

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Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb says the site gets "piles and piles of pitches for coverage from companies all day long and they almost always come in by email." His recommendation for would-be article subjects would be not to send an e-mail, not to call, not to use Twitter (even Direct Messages), not to use Facebook or Instant Messenger. Instead, he wants you to use RSS!


His idea there is that PR folks should send RSS feeds for client blogs and news releases, so when updates are made to their blogs, he'll see it, at his leisure.

Upside to him: Less e-mail, and the ability to enjoy/actually use Facebook, IM and Twitter without getting pitched.

Downside to the company: No understanding as to whether ReadWriteWeb actually "saw" your pitch, absolutely zero pre-pitching, and zero exclusivity. This way, RWW wouldn't get the news until it was out. In fact, Marshall says this is only for things that are public with no embargo, even pushing people back to e-mail for those.

---

And last year, Robert Scoble famously said Facebook would be "a new kind of press release". In the face of a growing e-mail tsunami, he said Facebook wall messages would be passed to his Nokia phone. He says, "now we have a new way for PR people to let me know about their apps. Write it on the wall please. Facebook: the new press release."

Of course, this only works until every PR person figures it out, and Robert would end up with the same information glut, just moved somewhere else.

Upside to him: Lower e-mail flow and fewer phone calls.

Downside to the company: Not every company uses Facebook or considers it professional. Facebook pitches would get lost amidst others wishing Robert a happy birthday or any other notes, and again, they would lose any chance at exclusivity or an embargo, after pitching in public.

---

So what do we have here, just in these three examples? We have three prominent bloggers with three very highly differentiated, inefficient ways of soliciting engagement with public relations and companies. While it's extremely popular these days to dish on old media journalists and claim print is going the way of the dodo, even the biggest reporters at the high-profile media outlets can still be reached by phone or by e-mail. They're not making you jump through hoops to get their attention.

To me, while its likely bloggers are looking to make their own lives easier, and looking to utilize available technology tools to bring clarity to the process, it looks like a sign of weakness. Can't handle the data glut or the outreach coming your way? Somebody else will. Somebody else with the ability to write as quickly as you can, with the right tone and a big enough audience, who can be reached by e-mail or by cell phone, or by Twitter or Facebook or FriendFeed or anything, will write that article and get that news coverage you miss.

Do you really think companies are going to remember to pitch Marshall at ReadWriteWeb via RSS and Stowe Boyd by TwitPitch and Scoble by Facebook? Knowing PR companies, I know they won't. Most of them still believe in the spray and pray method of e-mailing all contacts under the sun. There needs to be change, but making everybody jump through hoops while losing the personal engagement, exclusivity and timing won't work.

UPDATE: Elliott Ng, in the comments, gives us some good links, including Brian Solis' article on PR 2.0: In Blogger and Media Relations, You Earn the Relationships You Deserve and Rafe Needleman of WebWare complaining on Twitter about being pitched via Plaxo.

Profy Rolls Out Combined RSS Reader, Blogging Platform

Profy wasn't satisfied by simply rolling out a brand-new online RSS feed reader to challenge the established leaders, including Google Reader, NewsGator and Bloglines. With one massive update, the new service, launched in beta yesterday, not only gives Web users a new option for RSS feed consumption, but also, a new blogging platform, with interesting features that integrate the two, as well as linking in to other Web services, including Blogger.

While the world isn't lacking for RSS readers, Profy's combined offering is very interesting. With some fine-tuning as the company moves out of the beta process, the service could be very compelling to both established bloggers and new ones looking for a simplified platform to get started.

There are a few facets to Profy to focus on, including the "Feed Reader", the "Blog", the "Dashboard" and their messaging system or "Inbox".

The Feed Reader operates much like others out there. I imported my 260 or so feeds from Google Reader, and Profy recognized the folder structure. The Feed Reader is laid out cleanly with multiple tabs, enabling me to select from "Posts", reading the available items, "Feeds", showing me the name of the feed, its URL, and giving me the option to make edits, and "Folders", matching those I had in my OPML file.

I can read posts in list view, showing the source, feed name and author, or I can select expanded view, showing the entire post in the reader. Those are the basics. And aside from adding keyboard shortcuts, like Google Reader and AssetBar, there's not too much to demand before the company hits 1.0.


In the Feed Reader, I can "Add Star" to highlight a post, E-mail it to a friend, add tags, or most interestingly, I can hit "Blog It!", which pre-populates a post in my complementing Profy blog, including the full text and links of the post. Profy essentially copies the full text and headline of the post in my own blog, with me as the author, leaving the deleting to me. It's a cool tool, but one I could see abused by spam bloggers, should they ever get into the system. In my testing, it was easy to use, and I could simply post a Facebook story as my own (See the below screenshot). Profy does give credit to the source in the bottom right corner of your own post, but I expect it'd be a bit better to tweak "Blog It!" to instead focus on the headline and URL.


The Feed Reader also offers some strong flexibility. I can search my feeds for keywords, and I can look at the "Subscribers" link on any feed to see if other Profy readers are subscribed to that same blog. From those results, I can even "Add to friends" to get connected to similar Profy users who like reading what I do.


The Blog operates like those in TypePad and Blogger. There are a wide array of blogging templates provided by Profy, and you're given a Profy URL, like TypePad, with your own username: (For example: louisgray.profy.com)


Once you've selected a blog template, you can edit the layout of your blog, make new posts, or further down the road, read or moderate comments on the site.


Posting to Profy is simple for any TypePad or Blogger user. There's the option to post in either WYSIWYG or HTML, and you can use helpful buttons for styling or for adding images and YouTube video.

But most interesting to me is the ability to cross-post to Blogger or other platforms from Profy. If I were to move to Profy as my RSS reader or blogging platform, I wouldn't have to change a thing on louisgray.com. I wouldn't have to move files from the FTP site, or tweak Blogger in any way, as Profy could cross-populate both the Profy.com hosted blog and my own, just by linking the two. In testing, it was transparent to me that both posts from my Profy blog hit the louisgray.com site. To be honest, I was hoping to make it less transparent, so I could "push" individual posts to louisgray.com or Techaiku, instead of it happening automatically, but I expect either I was missing a step, or they'll make that option in the future by the 1.0 release.

Once the Feed Reader and Blog are up and running, you can manage all activity via Profy's Dashboard. From the Dashboard, I can view blog posts, read feeds, see comments made on my blog, or exchange messages with other Profy users. And any friends I've found through Profy automatically populate my Network, which assuming service growth, would expand over time.


Click for larger Dashboard image
For a beta product, Profy has done a solid job in introducing a lot of good functionality not usually found even in some of the more established feed readers, or blogging platforms. The idea of linking the feed reader and blog, while not abandoning existing services, is a good one. Obstacles in their way, aside from the usual efforts of growing awareness, and keeping up with user expectations, would be to follow the lead of Fav.or.it or others to enable commenting from RSS feed readers to the original blog, integration of Disqus in either area, and the ultra-important area of keyboard feed navigation.

The question is, can Profy rise up, in 2008, to challenge the established leadership of TypePad, WordPress and Blogger? The big three hold a commanding mindshare and user base, which is formidable. But so long as Profy makes it transparent and easy to move data into their service from others, and continues on the path of innovating and linking their disparate services, they have as good a chance as any.

If you're interested in getting your hands on Profy, it is in limited invite-only beta. I believe I have five available, but with any luck, I can get more. Let me know if you're interested!

ReadBurner Fired Back Up With Revamped GUI, Reader Integration

ReadBurner is back... with a serious makeover
The short history of ReadBurner, Alexander Marktl's pet project aimed at finding the most shared items on Google Reader has already been one of many twists and turns. First, it was discovered before planned launch, forcing Marktl into a wild one day scramble. The site rapidly gained followers, and competition, aiming to seize onto the shared links tabulating trend. But suddenly, Marktl went silent and on March 5th, said he was to shut the site down for good, or so we thought, only to see it resurrected less than ten days later, following the site's acquisition.

Now, under new ownership, ReadBurner is back with a bang, offering a dramatically improved UI, and a wealth of new features highlighting popular items and sources, as well as the most innovative new wrinkle, full integration of Google Reader within the site, making it more sticky as a destination site than ever, and keeping it one step ahead of Benjamin Golub's RSSMeme, who in ReadBurner's absence, aggregated more shared links feeds than anybody outside the walled garden of Facebook, where Mario Romero's Feedheads app reigns supreme.

The first thing you'll notice with the new and improved ReadBurner is its shiny Web 2.0 look, courtesy of PixelTalent. The new site embraces bright neon orange and blue, making it tempting to wear shades simply to browse the site. Maybe that's the idea, as ReadBurner tries to take what's honestly a very geeky application, on the fringe of blog reading and recommending, and make it seem "cool". Let's be honest though, talking up ReadBurner at most parties outside of Silicon Valley won't get you too many dates.

There are three major ways to filter the news, from the Popular (most shared in the last 48 hours), Upcoming (most shared in the last 24 hours) and Most Recent (a fire hose of shared items in near real-time). This is not new. But what is new is the way ReadBurner has now developed Categories (including an Apple category), Sub-Categories and in a TechMeme-like shift, "Related Items". Now, stories in the system are viewed based on their content, and they can be grouped together in story listings and individual item pages.

For example, Steven Hodson's WinExtra post (ReadBurner link) features similar stories from Mashable and SheGeeks. The other stories may not actually link to Steven in the way TechMeme's grouped stories tend to, but they are on the same wavelength.


ReadBurner shows related items.
Also new for ReadBurner is the ability for a blog owner to track their own site and how often items are shared. RSSMeme has long had this feature, (see: RSSMeme/louisgray.com) and now ReadBurner is doing the same (see: ReadBurner/louisgray.com). I've found this approach to be a good measure, beyond page views, as to which stories are best reaching my audience.


An item from louisgray.com on ReadBurner.
But while this seems intriguing on its own, the new ReadBurner team isn't done. From day one in version 2.0, they've added comments capability with Disqus integration (yes on the headlines and excerpt only, not the full story), as well as detailed statistics showing the top sources, as measured by total shares per story published (Example: 50 shares divided by 8 stories would have a score of 6.25). Unsurprisingly, like with TechMeme and RSSMeme, the household names are dominating this list, from TechCrunch to ReadWriteWeb, Lifehacker, Boing Boing and Gizmodo leading the way.

And integrating Google Reader is a great touch. Why go just to the Google Reader site if I can be one click away from ReadBurner? In combination, the pair offer a compelling destination for RSS goodness. I'd considered suggesting to the FriendFeed team that they should go the same way, but ReadBurner looks to have beaten them to the punch.


ReadBurner and Google Reader as one.
Outside of Feedheads, ReadBurner kicked off this rush to shared link aggregation, and with the help of a few friends, it should be back and on course. Be sure to watch the site closely as they continue to add users, tweak the algorithm and find new ways for distributors to leverage their data. We will be. Check them out at www.readburner.com.

Should Fractured Feed Reader Comments Raise Blog Owners' Ire?

One of the more frequently mentioned suggestions for avid Google Reader users is the addition of comments to the service, so RSS readers could respond to blog posts, either directly from the reader and back to the originating blog, or within the Google Reader community itself, in effect, becoming a social network. But while Google Reader has not yet enabled comments, other services are, and it seems the excitement of adding this capability is hardly universal - and its opponents have gone so far as to call it "outrageous" or "theft".

While the discussion around where a blog's comments should reside has raised its head before, especially around services like FriendFeed, (See: Sarah Perez of Read Write Web: Blog Comments Still Matter) it flared up again this afternoon when I had (innocently, I thought) highlighted how one friend's blog post from earlier in the week was getting a lot of comments, and had become the most popular story on Shyftr, a next-generation RSS feed reader that enables comments within its service.

While I had hoped the author (Eric Berlin of Online Media Cultist, who I highlighted on Monday and like quite a bit) would be pleased to see his post had gained traction, the reaction was not what I had expected. He said he was uneasy about seeing his posts generate activity and community for somebody else. Another FriendFeed user called it "content theft" and said "if they ever pull my feed and use it there, they can expect to get hit with a DMCA take-down notice". (See the discussion here)

I can see how content creators can feel threatened or wary of services who leverage full RSS feeds, or might actually have a case if they have publicly asked for no repurposing of their content, via Creative Commons or other methods. But I also see that the whole idea of reading feeds in isolation, without engaging, is going to soon be something of the past. AssetBar, Social|Median and Shyftr have been among the first to add comments in their site. Fav.or.it, via Disqus, offers the ability to post comments to the originating blogs. FriendFeed, RSSMeme and many, many others offer links to the content but contents on their site. And that's not even touching on the social news sites like Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, etc., where comments and community are generated, essentially through leveraging third party headlines.

As a blogger, I am a content creator. I don't want my content stolen, or reposted without attribution or under somebody else's name. But I am also a huge advocate of RSS and continuing to adapt where the conversation is being held. Just as my blog's RSS views have undoubtedly eclipsed my blog page views, I would not be surprised to see that more comments on my posts might eventually live outside of my blog. It would behoove me and other bloggers to be aware of the other places the conversation will be taking place, and to engage there, in my opinion, rather than railing against the continued evolution of how we're consuming content and engaging online.

Even the conversation about this issue has escaped the blogosphere. Eric, on FriendFeed writes, "It's slightly troubling that this conversation is taking place here instead of on one of our blogs," but it's not so much troubling in my mind, but instead requires a changing mindset.

The Web as a whole has clamored for full RSS feeds, not partial, so we don't have to return to the originating site. Some of us have just as loudly asked for comments and conversations to enter the world of the RSS feed reader. Now that we're starting to see what it's like, maybe it's not what we had fully anticipated. But it's the way things are headed, and rather than label innovators like Matt Shaulis (Twitter | FriendFeed) and Dave Stanley of Shyftr (Twitter | FriendFeed) as outrageous or possibly illegitimate, we should engage and speak up about what we think is right. As for the developers who enable these services, there are definitely ways they can help raise the visibility of the practice - through e-mail alerts, trackbacks, or even giving the option to opt out. But we'll be seeing this more and more going forward. I promise you that.

Checking In With RatingBurner, and Their New Widget

In late January, we first discussed RatingBurner (www.ratingburner.com), an interesting entry in the market, which helped rank blogs by their number of public FeedBurner RSS subscribers, and showed their day to day growth, both in aggregate numbers, and percentage increase. While Alexander Fedorov has been a little quieter than some other new entrants in the Web sphere, he has continued to update the site, adding new blogs daily, and inserting new features - including the debut of a new widget, which bloggers can use to show where they rank in RatingBurner's current standings.

While the value of ranking sites by their RSS count is the subject of some debate, in the absence of public, uncontested traffic and return visitor data, it is one metric available to nearly all major blogs, especially as FeedBurner has become the online standard for RSS delivery and tracking.

In the last few months, Fedorov wrote me to say, first, that support for branded feeds (i.e. not from feedburner.com) was added, and that feeds which point to subdomain of a blog but are still published with FeedBurner, can be added.

This might sound like a minor change, but this enabled sites like Engadget to be included. Engadget, which didn't figure in the first screen capture, now shows 1.6 million RSS readers, and even minute swings can show adds and drops of thousands per day. From January through today, you can also see TechCrunch increased from 654,000 readers to 782,000, and Mashable from 143,000 to 167,000.

As for me, at the time I clocked in with that post, I had 436 readers, and we're now seeing FeedBurner report 1,028 total.

Last week, Fedorov added a button for bloggers to post on their own site. As he wrote, the "button will automatically show a blog's ranking and when you click on it, you will be redirected exactly where they are sitting in the ranking."

For fun, I added mine to the site, and you can see my ranking (in the 400s) on the right side of louisgray.com. Does it add a ton of value? Not a lot, especially as you can consider to Rating Burner doesn't have the entire blogosphere indexed. But the database has grown dramatically since it first showed up in January, and it's always fun to see where you sit against your peers and competition, so if you're so inclined, it's real simple to add the button to your template. You can find out how on the RatingBurner Web site.

Fav.or.it Beta Effort is Not My Favorite. Not Even Close.

Sometimes the concept behind a new service ends up being much better than the actual experience. And try as I might to find out what it is I'm missing about a "good on paper" product, it occasionally happens that holes in the product, a confusing user interface, or a smattering of bugs can get in the way of recognizing its true potential. Unfortunately, so far my experience with Fav.or.it, a new next generation RSS feed reader, has been one disappointment after another, taking what should be an evolutionary step in the way we share data and interoperate with feeds and instead, throwing roadblocks and confusing processes that will surely thwart the site's ability to attract significant users.

I first became excited about Fav.or.it's potential to compete with Google Reader after seeing Robert Scoble's initial gushing back in December. The concept behind Fav.or.it sounds wonderful - offering a fully-developed RSS feed reader with a river of news interface, integrated commenting which feeds back to the originating blog, and a detailed directory of blogs, from technology to news and even sports.

When Fav.or.it opened its public beta in late February, I was excited to see that blogs with Disqus could integrate comments. Also promising attention data and a full API, it seemed the service would be well on its way to being a serious challenger.

But from day one, I've had issues getting Fav.or.it to even function at a basic level. I'm no stranger to beta products with raw edges or underbaked features, but trying to figure out Fav.or.it, or get the service to even find my RSS subscriptions has been one headache after another - one major reason I'd held off discussing Fav.or.it until now, hoping I was just missing something.

In March, I traded e-mails with Fav.or.it founder Nick Halstead, saying it didn't seem "100% transparent to me", and he mentioned having "teething problems" common to any new site, so again, I figured the site would eventually come around. But it hasn't yet been the case.


Fav.or.it choked on my Google Reader OPML every time.
The very first step to creating a service that can compete with Google Reader is enabling simple OPML import to get the feeds I read today into another system. Fav.or.it makes me think it would be easy, but every time I would upload my Google Reader subscription list, I was told the data was in the wrong format - nothing more. Just a failure. There was also the option to add URLs one by one, so I tried that, adding a handful of my favorite sites. Only then did I see a warning that Fav.or.it was only allowing upwards of 25 feeds to be added, less than 5 percent of what Google Reader is handling today for me.


Everywhere I turned, more limits and warnings...
Even nuttier, I was met with warnings when I imported my sites, being told every feed I added would be available to the community at large, not just to me. Further, I was told I couldn't upload feed mashups, Non-English feeds, Spam, Shopping or Porn. While I hadn't planned to do so, the feeling within Fav.or.it was extremely hostile, without the feelings of security you get in Google Reader or other feed readers.

Fav.or.it also wasn't very bright as to handling the few sites I did put in by hand. I had provided upwards of a dozen unique feed URLs, of which half were from FeedBurner. Fav.or.it tried to resolve the feeds, and lumped all those that started with "http://feeds.feedburner.com/" as one single feed. Obviously, that didn't work, so I saw the dozen I tried to put in quickly whittled down to about five. And in contrast to the near-instant adding of feeds to Google Reader, Toluu, Shyftr or AssetBar, Fav.or.it showed a lengthy progress bar, testing my patience.

Slowly, but surely, Fav.or.it managed to import one feed...

But, eventually they did import, and I could add these new feeds to what Fav.or.it calls a "slice". I can view the RSS feeds, in river view, and even see integrated comments for those who use Disqus. One of the major selling points of Fav.or.it has been the ability to defragment the conversation and bring comments back to the original blog.


Fav.or.it in action, showing comments in line...

But while that's nice, and noble, it certainly couldn't overcome the interface oddities I seemingly encountered at every turn. My slice "Tech Blogs" was marked with a number of 1110, with no seeming rhyme or reason, and clicking the 1110 showed Twitter, del.icio.us or send to a friend, without any indication of what clicking those items would do. Clicking the first two items gave me a checkmark, but no action.

What fav.or.it does bring to the table is a detailed blog directory, organized by humans, into categories, much like Jason Calacanis' Mahalo. But for me, I'm not all that interested in finding new sites for Drink, Spirituality, Government and Weather, among the options shown. For an RSS feeder really to blow me away, I need to be able to read my feeds, and take action. On Google Reader, that action is sharing or e-mailing. On AssetBar, that action is sharing, talking with others or rating an item. On FriendFeed and Yokway, it's commenting and liking or giving stars. But while fav.or.it does enable comments back to the blog, unlike the other services, who delivered on their core mission, they never gave me what I really wanted in the first place, a solid feed reader that could handle more than 25 feeds.


Help! Wait... there is no help.
And if that wasn't bad enough, when I finally gave up and went looking for help, giving in to the possibility I'm such a tech dummy that I was missing the obvious, I clicked through to the Frequently Asked Questions area (FAQ). Sure enough, it was blank.

So I guess nobody has any questions. But I sure do - how can you take a service with such good design, slap on so many features that sound compelling, and then reverse optimize it so I'm completely incapable of using it? I'm typically fairly forgiving for well-intended entrepreneurs that are working hard on what could be excellent products, but things have to change dramatically for me to give fav.or.it another run. I need to get all my Google Reader feeds into the system. And the system needs to be ready for people to use it, not for people to be stuck due to its many limitations.

Toluu Looking Like a Real Winner

Being part of an entrepreneur's launch of a new service is exciting. If I get early access to a product, and think it has real potential, it can be as if in some small way, I'm part of the site's launch team, and every little element of success they recognize makes me feel like I chose well. Sometimes, I really do worry that I'm wearing my early adopter hat so tight that it could be cutting off oxygen to my brain. But with the launch of Toluu ten days behind us, I can easily report the initial response has been more than I could have anticipated for the upstart Caleb Elston and his socially-oriented OPML sharing site.

After my initial coverage of the site last Monday, Caleb's site was almost immediately overwhelmed by eager testers who wanted their hands on the new offering. In the last ten days, Toluu's servers were upgraded, not just once, but twice, as the site saw hundreds of new users pour in, each adding anywhere from a handful to hundreds of their own RSS feeds, forcing Toluu to pull down thousands upon thousands of new items, and using its matching algorithm to crunch the data and help users find new friends and feeds.

(See: Toluu Blog: Toluu gets new server infrastructure)

The growth wasn't all due to my comments, of course. Despite what some say, I'm still very small compared with more brand name sites. The Toluu buzz turned into a roar last week following positive reviews from Allen Stern at Center Networks (Toluu Helps You Like What Your Friends Like) and Sarah Perez at Read Write Web (10 Reasons Why You're Going to Love Toluu). Toluu even gained a position in TechCrunch's CrunchBase company listings. (CrunchBase: Toluu)

Like most new entrants to the market, Toluu has some rough edges. But, like the best innovators, the service responds to user feedback extremely quick. On Tuesday, Caleb introduced two new features he says were the most popular requested features: First, generating an RSS feed or your activity on the site and secondly, delivering an RSS feed for the activity of both you and your friends. As he commented in a blog post, "Now your Toluu activity; the feeds you add, the feeds you favorite, the people you connect with, is now completely portable."

Caleb even chose to highlight the import and activity process using a screenshot which added louisgray.com to his feed lists as the example - no doubt in an attempt to get me to write about it (which apparently worked). Of note, the CrunchBase screenshot has a little louisgray.com touch to it as well (See here).

Sometimes, a site's potential for success is apparent immediately, and sometimes it takes a little more time. Toluu looks like a hit that's spreading virally as bloggers sign in, find new friends and keep talking it up. If he's not careful, Caleb could find himself preparing for yet another server upgrade in the near term.

If you haven't yet jumped on the Toluu bandwagon, there's still time, and I have plenty of highly sought-after invites, so post a comment and get one, or send me an e-mail.

How You Handle the Information Overload Is Up to You

This morning, AideRSS introduced an interesting tool that lets you filter your RSS feeds in Google Reader, flagging only those which have been deemed most important, thanks to criteria you set. (Get your invite codes here and see Read/Write Web's coverage)

The concept behind a filter like this is to help you tackle information overload by showing a subset of your feeds, highlighting only those which have gained attention by others, through AideRSS' unique approach, tabulating total number of comments, del.icio.us links, Google links, Diggs, etc. (See our coverage from December) But to me, while I definitely like what AideRSS is trying to do, I don't necessarily want what I read to be determined by the actions of others. I want to be the one who decides, based on the content of an item, if it's something I want to have interest in, to read in full, to share, to comment, or link to. And I would assume that as AideRSS needs some time to populate the attention graph, it would only become most useful as the time after initial publication increases.

When it comes to RSS feeds, many dread the number of items they wake up to each day.

Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins, a Mashable editor, in a comment on FriendFeed in response to one of my items, recently said, "Try waking up to about 700 unread inbox items and at least the same number of unread RSS items every morning (only after about 5 hours sleep)! Being an editor is tired work!"

And if it's not managed, it can be. Two weeks ago, I suggested a reader has 1-5 seconds to make a decision on an RSS item. But even if this is a challenge, I would rather be the one making the decision on a feed than letting software tell me what to read, or waiting for others to have already had their say before I get to news.

To me, automated filtering of content to show the most important items, such as that found in TechMeme, ReadBurner, RSSMeme, Feedheads and LinkRiver, is a great tool - because those algorithms are most frequently pointed at feeds I haven't subscribed to. Those robots can bring me new data from sources I don't hit every day. But when it comes to those feeds I've picked to read, you won't ever find me complaining about information overload. I love it. I look forward to new items in Google Reader. I look forward to seeing new items in FriendFeed and Twitter and new e-mail, both at home and at work.

You won't find me declaring RSS feed bankruptcy, or hitting "Mark all as read" in Google Reader. You won't find me complaining about having 100 or 1000 items to go through. As Robert Scoble has often said about Twitter, it's not who is followed the most, but who follows the most, and if I can choose to get the most amount of information in as quickly as possible, instead of waiting for others to tell me it's important, I've got an advantage. But if you are losing the battle against information overload, AideRSS and Google Reader have a strong tool. You can get yours here: http://gr.aiderss.com/?svblog

RSSMeme Helps Bloggers Know What Their Readers Like

RSSMeme, now two months old, has carved out an interesting niche in the shared links aggregation market, first forged by Mario Romero's FeedHeads application on Facebook, and later seeing ReadBurner and RSSMeme crowd in for availability on the Internet as a whole.

One of RSSMeme's so-far unique options is for a blog author to drill down and see how frequently each of their own blog posts have been shared on Google Reader link blogs. For those authors who have a variety of topics, RSSMeme can help gain yet another level of insight into what readers are finding most interesting, as well as saying what topics should be avoided in the future. As RSSMeme has the largest easily accessible library of Google Reader shared link blogs, it provides a good sounding board for the many popular tech blogs users are subscribed to.

To be counted among the most popular shared items on RSSMeme, an item would need at least 50 shares to achieve the weekly leaderboard, and nearly 100 shares for the all-time leaderboard. But for small fry like me, I can tell that one of my own items can be considered "popular" when it has as many as a dozen shares, and most popular items occasionally cross the 20 threshold. (See my RSSMeme page here)

Looking at my dedicated RSSMeme page, of the 20 items listed there, I had a total of 232 shares (as of 5 p.m. Sunday), for an average of 11.6 shares per item. Of these 20 items, five had as many as 18 shares or more apiece, including "Our Unborn Kids Will Wear Your Web 2.0 Schwag (18)", "LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel (20)", "In Blogging and RSS, Headlines Can be Make or Break (19)", "Duncan Riley Misses the Point of FriendFeed (19)" and "ReadBurner to Return With New Ownership (21)". Each of these items had a technology/Web feel to it, as did those items which fell just behind.

On the other side of things, three posts only had one measly share. Of those three, two were stories I wrote about baseball, and one was about having to use my old PowerBook. As Yuvi Panda, the once and future stat king, wrote me not too long ago, "One thing that you seem to like writing about but people don’t really pay too much attention to is sports." Looks like he was right.

This level of disparity becomes even more pronounced with the more popular subscribed blogs.

TechCrunch's last 20 items range from 3 and 4 shares for a pair of stories on Yahoo! to 72 and 81 shares for a pair of stories on FriendFeed. (See: RSSMeme: TechCrunch)

ReadWriteWeb's last 20 items show one item on Microsoft's SilverLight gained only 2 shares, while a review of Toluu racked up 45 and Sarah Perez's comments on good UI design got 70. (See: RSSMeme: Read/Write Web)

And Robert Scoble bottoms out at 2 shares for highlighting a recent video with Mashable, but peaks at 86 for revealing the secret to Twitter. Other hot topics gaining about 40 shares each was a post saying FriendFeed would trump TechMeme or Google Reader, and saying TechCrunch's Michael Arrington had the wrong goals for assembling a "Dream Team". ( See: RSSMeme: Scobleizer.com)

RSSMeme has done more than just tally the most popular shared items on Google Reader, and display publicly available link blogs. You can now visit any shared blog's dedicated page, and get a visual approximation for how frequently the site's readers are hitting share in Google Reader, and what topics those who read RSS feeds like.

If you have a blog with an RSS feed, I encourage you to go to www.rssmeme.com, do a search for your name, and see what your readers like. It'll even tell you who shared what, and isn't that the kind of direct feedback you're looking for?

The Largest Blogs Are Still Rapidly Growing Their Subscriber Base

There's no universally accepted way to track momentum in the blogosphere. Some point to Alexa and ComScore statistics, while others poke holes at this data. Others instead look to the TechMeme leaderboard to show who has the largest share of voice in tech. But we do have access to some quantitative tools that give us a clearer picture into just how fast the largest blogs are growing their most loyal readers via RSS, thanks to FeedBurner and tertiary services, including BlogPerfume and RatingBurner.

In December I first mentioned BlogPerfume and the site's ability to review your FeedBurner RSS growth, and project your statistics three, six and twelve months ahead. But more interesting than self navel-gazing, you can view any blog's statistics, so long as they use FeedBurner as their RSS engine and activate the Awareness API.

(This restriction made some popular feeds, including Engadget and Robert Scoble, unavailable for analysis.)

I clicked over to RatingBurner, which ranks public FeedBurner feeds from most popular to least popular, and fed BlogPerfume some of the most popular technology blogs.


(Click for larger image)
A quick look at some of the leaders in the so-called A-List, who hover in the 100,000 or so RSS subscriber range and above, shows 3-month growth of 10 to 25% per site. Looking much lower in the list, to those who are in the 500 to 5,000 or so RSS subscriber bracket, you can see a great deal wider range, including some who have nearly doubled their subscriber count over the last 90 days.

Unsurprisingly, TechCrunch is the king of the hill here, with an average of nearly 700,000 subscribers this month. Over the last three months alone, TechCrunch added nearly 84,000 new RSS subscribers, for a growth rate of 13.72%. BlogPerfume also showed single month growth of 4.2%, and projected TechCrunch would break 1 million subscribers before this time next year.

TechCrunch's enormous subscriber base means other sites can grow more quickly, despite getting fewer net new RSS readers. In the same period, Read/Write Web grew 16.47%, adding 25,017 subscribers, and Mashable! grew 15.77%, increasing their total by, 20,954. In fact, Mashable!'s high growth rate, coupled with GigaOM's lower 8.92% growth rate, would see them pass up Om Malik's team before six months are up, if you project that 90-day trajectory forward. Lower down the chart, you can also see Fred Wilson and Brad Feld posting growth rates of more than 20%, as they reach six digits. (Also Included: Guy Kawasaki, John Battelle)


(Click for larger image)
In fact, RSS subscribers are growing steadily at all levels. Looking down where I live and breathe, growth rates over the last three months at those off us under the 5k level show 30% increases for Andy Beard and Mathew Ingram, and dramatically higher levels for people like Tamar Weinberg (78.72%) and Muhammad Saleem (59.67%). (Also included: Mark Evans, Zoli Erdos, Susan Mernit and Sarah In Tampa)


Our own stats reflected one-month growth of 41.88%, and three-month growth of 286.89%, with an average of 708 subscribers, up from just 183 back at the start of December. (See: BlogPerfume: LouisGray.com and above chart.)

Even as some are openly discussing dropping the RSS feed reader, or asking where they are going next, this rising tide is raising all boats. While there's no doubt this initial report is partial, it shows RSS adoption is strong at every level. With anticipated further growth in adoption and gravitation toward tech blogging, the momentum is sure to continue.

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I know I didn't get every relevant site, so if you found one that is remarkable in growth rate or wasn't what you expected, head to http://www.blogperfume.com/feed-analysis/index.php, put their FeedBurner URL in, and note it in the comments. I'm eager to see what you find.

Toluu Offers Gateway to Friends' RSS Feeds, Recommends New Ones

While Google Reader, Shyftr, AssetBar and others have developed strong options for online RSS feed reading, it's still not easy to learn what fe