Duncan Riley's Inquisitr Teams Up With ReadBurner for Web's Best

Since he launched The Inquisitr just under six months ago, Duncan Riley has taken some innovative approaches to sharing news on the Web. (See: Duncan Riley's First Week at The Inquisitr Is Inspiring) Not content to simply repeat "the news of the day" and hash over the same tired subjects, Riley has added spice to the mix, covering celebrity news, and taking new approaches to finding new ways to present hot topics outside of his own site - through QMeme, which tracks popular items on FriendFeed, and Inquisitr IQ, which, in a fashion similar to AllTop, features posts from some of Duncan's favorite blogs.

Today, Duncan took another innovative step, becoming the first to harness the new ReadBurner platform by integrating the service's top stories within his site as content - not by embedding the full content on the Inquisitr, but instead, letting his readers click out and find new sources for top tech news, at their original source.


You can see ReadBurner headlines alongside The Inquisitr news
The ReadBurner partnership is part of a new, revamped, look for The Inquisitr, which now features the tagline "a better mix", hinting at the breadth of coverage available.

Clearly, in my advisory role at ReadBurner, I was aware of Duncan's plans to incorporate the service's content, but one of the most intriguing pieces of the partnership is that Duncan proactively reached out to our team rather than us asking him if he was interested in carrying the content. Duncan, looking at the options on the Web, selected ReadBurner, and presented us with an innovative way to get the best of the Web and make it portable.

You can see the new look for the Inquisitr here: http://www.inquisitr.com/

Also, the official blog post by Adam Ostrow, ReadBurner CEO is here:
Introducing the ReadBurner Platform v0.1 with The Inquisitr!

I'm both looking forward to more innovation from The Inquisitr and, of course, more developments at ReadBurner. I bet there is more to come from both sites.

DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner.

Hackr WatrCoolr: Tech News Aggregation With No Mouse Required

A couple weeks ago, in an article about Microspaces, I said that Web entrepreneurs are finding new ways for you to navigate their sites, and many are now incorporating keyboard input, to jump to new comments or pages. Though I mentioned it in a quick tweet on September 25th, I thought it was worth highlighting the Hacker WatrCoolr, a site that displays headlines from many popular tech news sites, and lets you quickly flick through them using only your keyboard - no mouse required.


A Headline from ReadBurner on WatrCoolr Tonight
WatrCoolr shows the latest headlines from Digg, Hacker News, Del.icio.us, Techmeme, Reddit, RSSmeme, Slashdot, Yahoo! News and ReadBurner. Each headline shows its recency, and the destination URL (e.g. nytimes.com or makeuseof.com).


Scoble's Post Hits Techmeme and Makes it to WatrCoolr
But unlike many other news aggregation sites, the Hacker WatrCoolr doesn't shoe-horn them into one busy page, like AllTop. Instead, it displays one headline at a time. To scroll through older items from the same source, you just need to hit the down arrow key. To see a new source, hit the right or left arrow. And to read the article, you just have to press the "r" key, or press "n" to have it open in a new window or tab.

While Hackr WatrCoolr is not looking to replace your RSS reader, some of the functionality is very similar to that of applications like Google Reader, and it's a very easy way to get all the top stories from each of these sites in one place. It may be a little experiment, but it hints at one way the Web could go to make the process of our news gathering even that much more easy. I hope to find more Web developers who are thinking different about how we navigate today's often-formulaic and static Web sites.

DISCLOSURE: I am an advisor to ReadBurner, and hold a small equity position.

My Blog Is Less a Destination Site than a Conduit

By now, we've all likely grown used to the fact that RSS readers don't often see a blog's redesign. For those who choose not to click through and leave comments, there's little reason at all to visit a blog directly any more, considering it's possible to power through dozens or hundreds of feeds in a feed reader, be it Google Reader, BlogLines or any other. With tangential services like Disqus enabling me to even engage with readers via e-mail, instead of through the blog, there's now even less reason for me to even visit my own site.

At this point, I probably, on most days, can't even tell you my daily RSS subscriber count, visible on the blog, or see the MyBlogLog widget's most recent visitors, as I'm using my blog as a way to project content outward - to RSS readers, to aggregators, like FriendFeed, Strands and Social Median, and to connect with readers via e-mail, using Disqus. It also, via RSS, powers popular sharing sites, like ReadBurner and RSSmeme. But none of those activities, with the exception of comments, require actual visits.

While it's still important to be sure the blog itself loads quickly, for those who view it for the first time, or for those who do click through RSS and choose to leave a comment, the look and feel of the blog is less important over time. I expect fewer people are typing in the louisgray.com URL and viewing pages directly, as they accumulate feeds and read more, and see the blog's UI more as a shell for content than a destination where a reader would spend a good amount of time. At this stage, the blog is simply a point in time for the content to begin its journey.

The life of a post, as always, for me anyway, starts out in e-mail, where it's authored. Then it's copy/pasted into Blogger. Then I visit the site, quickly, and ping FeedBurner. Subsequently, I refresh the blog feed in FriendFeed to keep it up to date, and send a TinyURL copy to Twitter. At that point, I really don't have to come back. Should someone opt to comment, I can reply via e-mail in Disqus, and even Delete unwanted spam or other messages.

The bulk of the activity around the blog is pretty much happening someplace else - making the number one purpose for the blog site itself to convert new visitors into signing up for the RSS feed. So if they bump into the content, via Techmeme, Digg, StumbleUpon, ReadBurner, FriendFeed, or anywhere else, they'll sign up and take in my content in the way they choose. But my blog is not the destination. It's a point in the journey. For those who are relying on ad revenue to come through via page views, this won't be good news, but that's what I see happening. For me, as I'm not trying to convert visitors into cash, this is the new reality, and we're fine with you just signing up, passing through and being part of the conversation as you choose.

There is No Social Media Overload

Every day, there are more and more great services to investigate in the world of social media. Each one breaks new ground in terms of features, focus or user interface. There are many different sites that target general social networking, some are for business, some are for dating, some are for microblogging, and others for service aggregation. And there will be many more. While some are calling for a pause in the innovation, somewhat fatigued by the implied redundancy or overwhelmed by chasing down comments and conversations in new places, it's worth noting there's time in the day to manage a good number of sites, and not all the winners have yet been crowned.

To have a full deck of social media tools, you essentially need the following:

• 1 or more blogs that you manage.
• 1 or more accounts on an RSS feed reader.
• 1 or more microblogging identities.
• 1 or more accounts on a business networking tool.
• 1 or more accounts on a social network.
• 1 or more accounts on a service aggregator or lifestream.
  

(Also helpful: A social bookmarking site, online photo site, music recommendation service, etc.)

For me, this means I blog here, use Google Reader, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and FriendFeed as my core applications for each category. But below these headliners are others.

For RSS, I also use Shyftr and liked AssetBar before it went away. I've tried Bloglines, FeedEachOther and NewsGator as well. There are also tools that interact with RSS, like Toluu, which helps you find feeds your friends like and integrates with Google Reader, and the sites dedicated to finding the most shared items in Google Reader, like ReadBurner, RSSMeme and Feedheads. (Disclosure: I am an advisor to ReadBurner)

For microblogging, beyond Twitter, you have Identi.ca, Plurk, and now, Rejaw. I'm signed up at each, but use Twitter primarily, copying posts to Identi.ca, via Posty. I need to check out Rejaw more, but am no expert.

For business networking, there's also Plaxo, which has morphed into a lifestreaming application.

For social networking, many still use MySpace, or Friendster, but Facebook has the momentum and the development on its side. Orkut never got the traction expected.

As for lifestreaming and aggregation, I am absolutely overweighted here, and I enjoy it. Justin Korn referred to it as "Super Kickass Social Network Following Power", but if you're interested, it's fairly easy to be engaged on sites like FriendFeed, Social Median and Strands all at once, like I'm trying to do.

I like FriendFeed because it easily pulls in my activity from around the Web and has a sharp community with good conversations and hiding. I like Social Median because it lets me just see news and posts on topics I pick or from people I follow. I like Strands because it has similar elements to FriendFeed, but more filtering and some good potential. I also know it can continue to improve because it’s early. Just in the last 36 hours, I've gone from being a nothing on Strands to having more than 100 people whom I can interact with.

Below this crust of leaders, you also have smaller sites like Yokway and LetsProve, where I'm registered, but haven't done much of late. FriendBinder doesn't seem to have taken off either, and BlogRize, though interesting, got quiet fast, and seems to have gone away, as did Mergelab. The truth is that we don't know which sites are going to win, and it makes sense to be registered everywhere and active on those places where you find the best community and the best content.

Of course, just because I sign up for something, or find something, doesn't mean that you're obligated to try it out. Not all sites are for everyone. But I'm far from being overloaded with Social Media. You just have to find balance, time, and keep remembering there is no quota and you don't have to read everything. Contrary to some belief, I'm not constantly on each site. I just read quickly, decide quickly and respond quickly. None of these sites is a real big time sink, unless you force yourself to read everything. It's easier to let your friends decide the best pieces, and for you to rely on search tools to get the rest, whether it be through Twitter Search, or pre-determined Google blog searches.

The only way you get social media overload is if you don't manage it well, just like you can get RSS overload or e-mail overload, or so I've heard. Even as there are more services to engage with, the number of hours you have to work with them is still the same. So do check out as many as you think have potential, and stick with the ones that offer you the community you're looking for, the engagement you need, and the best feature set. You'll find your niche.

See Also:

• Relax, Bloggers: Nobody Is Keeping Score, and There's No Quota.
• My Social Media Consumption Workflow
• Continuous Parallel Attention: My New Reality

Transparency, Disclosure and Opening Up the Kimono

On Wednesday, I was pleased to announce my beginning a new, formal, relationship with the ReadBurner team as an advisor, where I'll be looking to help provide guidance and strategy and be more of a colleague with the already-successful team, who is looking to make the site a one-stop destination to find the most popular content online, today starting with RSS feeds, and maybe tomorrow, much, much more. Who knows?

In advance of this announcement, I reached out to a pair of folks who I perceive to be competitors of ReadBurner, and told them exactly what the plan was - that I was going to be helping ReadBurner out, and that I wasn't going to be paid, but instead, would essentially have a small potential equity stake, just like any employee, advisor or board member at a private company. ReadBurner's success, essentially, could be my success as well, should the stars be aligned.

Crossing the chasm from a completely neutral party to a biased party, or at least having the perception of bias, isn't something I'm used to. My enthusiasm for ReadBurner, as well as my enthusiasm for FriendFeed, AssetBar, Social Median, Feedly, Ballhype and other services over the last few years, has been seen here, and in each case, it has been done so without compensation, or expectation of compensation. Now that this has changed in one specific example, it of course raises questions. Will competitors of ReadBurner ever talk to me again? Will other companies try and guess where ReadBurner is headed, and trusting me less, go a different route? Maybe they will, and that's a risk that's assumed.

Only hours after my first post did I get a question like this from one developer, asking if ReadBurner should be considered competition to their work, and should they "be careful about sharing things we're working on"? Well, in all truthfulness, you should always be careful about sharing pre-release content with anyone, to start with, and second, you should always think about whether that person will have pre-conceived biases, or will be abusing your trust. And it makes sense to protect your proprietary data.

With that said, over the last few years, I have tried to be as transparent as possible, and it is important to me to be trusted. I have never written a single post on this site for pay, or in exchange for goods. I've also tried to be reachable by anyone, occasionally to my detriment. My cell phone number and personal e-mail address have been on this blog since early 2007, and even in the footer of every RSS feed. In one example where I was concerned there could be a perception of bias, I told you when I won an iPhone from Social Median and asked you to judge me to see if I unequally gave praise to the site as a result. And I expect to keep telling you if I can be found in any way to be uneven in how I view a site, person or anything else.

In 2008, especially, I've worked with developers and entrepreneurs, getting early access to sites sometimes weeks or months ahead of their roll-out, and have done so without leaking their information early, and often, worked to provide informal QA to help get their product ready for announcement, with Feedly being the best example. As I said this evening in a fun ReadBurner podcast, if I can help make the products and services we use online better, then I've done my job. I often want these products to succeed, even if I'm not their target demographic and am more than happy to keep things close to the vest, and often offer advice for free. It's what I'd been doing with ReadBurner off and on before they asked for more of my time and make it official.

But truth be told, in the online space, sites that look completely different today could look similar tomorrow. The LOUD3R family of Web sites offers many different topic-driven news aggregators, as did the Ballhype/Showhype/Beltway Blips family, each of which I covered. SocialMedian, similarly, can offer an aggregation of news on the same topics, and sites like MyBlogLog, Fav.or.it and Technorati use topics to bring similar bloggers and posts together. In theory, so could FriendFeed, ReadBurner, Feedheads or RSSmeme. And each of the last few sites could be rejiggered to take on more horizontal plays like Google News or Techmeme.

Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, on the podcast, made it clear that if he were a competitor to ReadBurner, not only would he not want to share any information with me, but he recommended to us on the call that we should be especially careful, so no entrepreneur could claim we had stolen their ideas. Allen is a smart guy whose ideas I respect, and he's right. But you shouldn't expect that overnight I'm going to start saying ReadBurner every other word and talking smack about their competitors. And I've never received anything like a confidential roadmap from anybody - so that's not an issue.

To help with clarity, I am going to add details about the ReadBurner relationship to my "About" page, and I'm going to get even more transparent so that anybody who does have questions can get those answers. There is one more small company I've been helping in an advisory role since early this Spring, and soon, they will be public, so I can talk about it, and again, be transparent. But that's in a space I don't write about, so much of the above doesn't apply.

Since starting this site, I've very visibly eschewed advertising, and haven't been making any money for what I write or where I participate. Maybe working in a consultancy or advisory role to companies like ReadBurner is where I end up "monetizing the blog", even if that isn't my sole goal for being here. As previously mentioned, I enjoy the conversations and the camaraderie, and have been doing a lot of "advising" for free for a lot of different sites. That's why I wrote "10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader" back in March of 2007, and offered "10 More Suggestions for LinkedIn" that same month, as well as 10 Suggestions for FriendFeed last December. That's why I asked What Is the Future Of MyBlogLog?. In none of those cases were my suggestions requested or compensated, and I hope to keep thinking out loud and offering advice for free.

My activity with ReadBurner, in actuality, will be very small, compared to everything else I'm doing. But if there's ever a chance where I could be seen as being biased, or needing to disclose that relationship, I will absolutely do so, and I both expect you to and want you to keep me honest - as I've tried to be so far. And if or when I screw up, call or e-mail. Transparency is the best policy.

I've Taken a New Advisory Role With ReadBurner

If you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you'll know that one of the most frequent topics I've discussed is that of RSS readers, and innovative tools to determine "hot" or most popular items - either on a broad measure, or by specific topic or vertical. One of the most fun stories to follow, for me, this year, was the stealth debut of ReadBurner, followed by its rapid ascension into visibility, its later changing hands and continued efforts to add new features and make it a standard for determining the best content across the Web.

As of today, I'll be taking a more direct role in helping the team at ReadBurner succeed, working with them in an advisory role, where I can spend a few hours each week talking strategy.

So what does this mean for the other companies in this space, who have played a crucial role in our coverage this year, such as RSSmeme, Feedheads, and LinkRiver? To me, it doesn't change a whole lot. I've made it clear that I really like this arena, and see that it has great potential, and I've maintained a good relationship with the developers at each site.

In fact, I reached out to both Mario Romero and Ben Golub in advance of this post to let them know of our making the ReadBurner affiliation more official, in case they felt I had a new conflict of interest, or would be treating them differently going forward. As I told both of them, I would absolutely love to keep being updated and spreading the word, but understand if they felt more competitive, and if any future coverage of either will need a formal disclosure of sorts.

So why ReadBurner? Because the team of Drew Olanoff, Adam Ostrow, Thomas Connors and Alexander Marktl has recognized the potential in a democratically-oriented site that can bring the day's top news to people, regardless of its source, or its topic. They are looking to springboard ReadBurner out of the hobby phase and help it grow. I'm hoping I can help, and I'm honored they extended the opportunity.

And in case you're curious, this doesn't impact my day job, which remains the same, as outlined on LinkedIn. But even if I can help the ReadBurner team in a small way, I'm excited to try. It's already been fun watching the site grow from its infancy earlier this year.

You can follow our efforts at http://www.readburner.com/. Looking forward to updating you with more, including on the ReadBurner podcast, tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Pacific. (Watch the official blog.)

Feedheads Breaks Out of Facebook to Compete In Shared Items Arena

Before ReadBurner, LinkRiver and RSSmeme arrived, there was only one game in town when it came to calculating the most popular shared items in Google Reader, and it was Feedheads. Feedheads, the popular Facebook application created by Mario Romero, harnessed the power of Google Reader to show the total number of shares each item had, displays which of your friends shared the item, and even what items were popular in a network (like "Silicon Valley", for instance).


But while ReadBurner and RSSmeme were gaining traction outside the walled garden of Facebook, and gathering a good deal of visibility from bloggers who liked their democratized view of finding "hot" stories, Feedheads remained less visible, available only on Facebook. That all changed tonight, as Romero has brought Feedheads to Feedheads.org, featuring the same functionality, but now available on the Internet at large.

As with ReadBurner and RSSmeme, the top shared sources include popular sites like comics from XKCD, Lifehacker, TechCrunch and Gizmodo.

The new Feedheads.org is spartan in terms of its look and feel, but you can view the top shared items over the last 7 days, the last 24 hours, see newly shared items, popular tags, and feeds.

Feedheads also does more than just count the feeds. It can also show who shared the item, by clicking on the number of shares, and it shows shared Google notes, something RSSmeme has held to itself thus far.

You can even log in with your Facebook credentials and see your own sharing history, at http://www.feedheads.org/me, which effectively automatically gives you your own "leaderboard" of shared items, much like I rolled out late last month, only instead of the last 30 days, it shows your cumulative history from the first time you installed Feedheads.

I've often written about the interesting space of tabulating shared items in Google Reader, and the intrigue of Feedheads, having read about it on other blogs, was a big reason I eventually joined Facebook in the first place. After starting out by showing itself in Facebook as simply "Google Reader", the service rebranded as Feedheads in October, and rapidly grew to a user base of more than 10,000 by December of last year. Unfortunately, more recent statistics are unavailable, but breaking out of Facebook is a big step in the right direction for Mario.

The success of both ReadBurner and RSSmeme has shown there's room enough for more than one player in this space, especially as each site has differentiated itself through a series of innovations. Feedheads.org was the original player in this space, and Mario led the way in trying to make order where there was none before. Now, out of the walled garden, it should be interesting to see what innovations he has planned next.

Techmeme and TechCrunch's Detractors Prove It's Hard to be On Top

One downside of being in a visible leadership position is that you often have a bulls-eye on your back. Sometimes it's from your competition. Sometimes it's from people who feel what you offer isn't benefitting themselves personally, and other times, it can arguably be your biggest fans, who want to change what it is you do to serve their whim of the day. In the tech blogosphere, there is no single blog more influential and visible than TechCrunch, and there is no single aggregator or news site more influential and visible than Techmeme. That the two's fortunes are at times seen as being closely linked only helps to fuel the flames of frustration by those eager to see change, be it through finding alternative sources for news, or, instead, asking for either site to change its tone, its breadth of coverage, or its methodology.

From a third party point of view, it seems the day in and day out potshots against both Techmeme and TechCrunch have taken their toll on the most visible representatives of each site. Techmeme's Gabe Rivera is well-known for his sarcastic, evasive, answers when his site's reputation is questioned, and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is often described as short-fused and sleep deprived. Recently rumors have circulated saying Arrington wants out of the blogging business, and is looking to sell, no doubt in part due to stress of the "always on" atmosphere and ruthless competition. Of course, rumors are simply rumors... but given most PR firms have gotten to the point where reaching out to TechCrunch is part of their standard shtick, it's likely not as fun fielding all the inquiries and sticking to others' schedules as openly writing once was. And TechCrunch has burned through its share of strong writers, with talents like Marshall Kirkpatrick and Duncan Riley leaving, one on good terms, and the other, not as well, as it turned out. (See: On Arrington, My Final Word)

The two sites' major detractors tend to rail on common topics. TechCrunch can be seen as egocentric, and Arrington is perceived to have a bee-line on exclusives. Techmeme similarly has been described as elitist by those who don't get included, navel-gazing by those who think it's too insular, biased by those who feel they have been overlooked, or a single person's playground, by those who feel Gabe's claims to automation are overblown. And some industry blog veterans who regularly appear on Techmeme have even taken to saying it's not as relevant and influential as it once was, replaced by other sources of news.

The complaints around either service became so commonplace that a new word, bitchmeme, was made, loosely defined as "bitching about Techmeme", usually on the weekend, when some tech bloggers had no news to write about. The phrase since took on a life of its own, meaning any silly conflict between blogs that took place on the weekend.

TechCrunch and Techmeme get as much grumpiness tossed their direction as they do because they each own a valuable niche in the blogosphere, and are expanding their lead, rather than relinquishing it. While you could say that TechCrunch competes with ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, GigaOM or others, they have cemented themselves as the go-to site for new services entering the market, and even their opinion pieces are widely read, with almost a million unique RSS subscribers taking note. Techmeme's best competition at this point is BlogRunner, with Hacker News, Dave Winer's TechJunk, Duncan Riley's QMeme and more organic sites like RSSmeme or ReadBurner coming up in conversation. But Techmeme's original perceived competition, like TailRank and Megite, are mere shadows of what they initially promised. Meanwhile, TechCrunch is bringing on new writers, and posting more stories than ever (See: The Statbot: TechCrunch Statistics A-W), and Techmeme is going more mainstream, with news sources like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times featuring more prominently than most individual bloggers.

And with this leadership position, the sites don't have the luxury of acting without criticism any longer. Gabe almost has a part-time position made for himself just to go from blog to blog and explaining that in fact, Techmeme is not evil, and that it is relevant, explaining that TechCrunch has built a reputation as a reputable source for tech news, and therefore, is adequately represented on his site and in the leaderboard. Seemingly every day, Gabe is having to answer questions on Twitter or FriendFeed from people like Robert Scoble (or me in one example, when I wondered why a hot topic wasn't getting airtime). Meanwhile, Arrington gets called nasty names, mocked by Valleywag, and yelled at on Twitter.

But if you take a step back, TechCrunch's goal is to be a technology blog focused on Web 2.0, and it's doing that. Techmeme's stated goal is to be like the front page of the memes that are happening in the tech blogosphere at any given time, and for the large part, it does do that. While there is some uncertainty as to all the criteria that makes up being part of Techmeme, or rising up and down the page, or when something makes the site, it typically takes discussion, not only on the original site, but through links from other blogs, on Twitter, and other sharing sites.

The argument could be made that you could possibly find your technology news faster in another way. Maybe you could find it on FriendFeed, and get a broader scope of sources. Maybe you prefer the democratic approach of ReadBurner and RSSmeme. Maybe you want to go through Google Reader yourself, or rely on others' shared link blogs. But there is no question in my mind that Techmeme is relevant, as is TechCrunch, and being mentioned on either site continues to drive traffic today.

I also believe that Techmeme does a very good job at being available to those bloggers who aren't elite household names. Just tonight, we saw a blog that was born only three days ago make the site, and Yuvi Panda's work on The Statbot shows one third of all Techmeme headlines come from the "Long Tail". Techmeme is accessible to bloggers who write quality content and spur discussion. While I'm absolutely active in places like FriendFeed and Twitter, I don't believe that discussions from FriendFeed belong on Techmeme any more than do popular Twitter posts or popular YouTube videos. Techmeme has specialized in bringing us top tech blogging news, and it's doing it.

The bottom line? If you don't like Techmeme and you don't like TechCrunch, stop reading, or go out and make your own. The best way to show they're no longer relevant is to take them down yourself through competition. But today, they are both standing strong whether you like it or not. I just hope Mike Arrington and Gabe Rivera are enjoying what they do as much as when they first started, and that the daily body blows haven't gotten them so jaded that they want out, for that would be a big loss.

ReadBurner Revamps Stats Pages, Expanding Shared Items Analysis

The ReadBurner team continues to make enhancements to the popular Web site dedicated to showing the most popular items shared on Google Reader and Netvibes. Tonight, in advance of their weekly podcast, featuring MG Siegler of ParisLemon and VentureBeat as a guest, they are rolling out upgrade statistics showing the most popular sources, displaying the average number of shares per story for a given author or source in the system.

In a change from the service's previous methodology, the new reports are intended to reward consistency, meaning that a site won't gain from one-time spikes around a popular story, and won't get more prominence due to a higher frequency of posting.


The new stats, seen at http://www.readburner.com/stats, come only a week after RSSmeme debuted new sidebar widgets that show the top tags and top users for the day, as well as widgets that can show who are the most frequent sharers of a specific blog. You can see the "Top Sharers" on the right side of this page to see who shares content from louisgray.com, as well as the tags I use the most to describe my posts.

Both sites are making strides to expand away from simply counting the data to helping analyze it. Both sites also gave a nod today to the morning's news that Chris Wetherell, the main architect behind the amazing Google Reader, will be leaving the company. Had it not been for his efforts, and Google Reader's growth, neither site would exist.

These, and other topics, will undoubtedly be part of the night's discussion with MG. You can tune in here.

OneSpot Makes Publishing Personalized Memetrackers Simple

News aggregation sites that can help highlight the freshest, most relevant or most popular news from around the Web are essential to separating the signal from the noise. But all too often, these memetrackers are siloed, without readers having all that much input into what's considered most relevant, or determining what content gets in and what does not.

The success of Gabe Rivera's Techmeme has had many thinking how they could create their own personal Techmeme, featuring the best of the Web, but only for those topics they're most interested in, or from those sources they choose. Gabe's product, despite some competition from BlogRunner and Megite, as well as others, has remained the most relevant and accepted leader in the space, but its algorithm has left some people wanting more.

Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr leverages FriendFeed, building what he called QMeme, displaying the most popular content on FriendFeed over the last 24 hours from those he follows. Corvida of SheGeeks once said LinkRiver was her own personal Techmeme. Rafe Needleman of WebWare once called ReadBurner a Techmeme for Google Reader. But none of these solutions, while interesting, offer the individual manageability of a new product that's now come available to the Web at large: OneSpot.

Already in place at the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, as well as some more vertically-oriented sites, OneSpot enables anybody to leverage the service's more than 250,000 RSS feeds to design and configure a personal meme, simply by starting with a few "trusted" RSS feeds, and letting OneSpot do the hard work of finding similar feeds on the same topic, and then determining the most popular content.

The result is a highly customizable personal memetracker that can be displayed on a full Web page or as a widget, drawing from the criteria you set, and publishing as frequently as you would like.


The OneSpot Dashboard Lets Me Choose Topics and Schedules
In the last few weeks, I created three memetrackers using OneSpot. One used my blog as the center of the universe (as most bloggers would like). One focused on technology at large. A third, and so far, the most interesting to me, focuses solely on the creators and participants in social media, link aggregation and lifestreaming.

See:
LouisGray.com: Top Stories > OneSpot
LouisGray.com: Social Media Top Stories > OneSpot
LouisGray.com: Technology Top Stories > OneSpot

To configure my personal OneSpot publication, I entered a few "Trusted Feeds", and OneSpot then found thousands of "Related Feeds", allowing me to see the name of the feed, when it was last updated, and giving me two choices: to add the feed to my "Trusted" bucket, or to "Remove" it from the list of options.

I found OneSpot's recommendation engine to be very good. If I showed louisgray.com as a Trusted Feed, OneSpot recommended SheGeeks, The Last Podcast, the Official ReadBurner Blog, Benjamin Golub, Webomatica and a few others, no doubt leveraging my own previous linking behavior.


Trusted Feeds I Posted to my Social Media OneSpot

Related Feeds Suggested for my Social Media OneSpot
For the Social Media publication, I had added the main blogs for FriendFeed, ReadBurner, Toluu, Shyftr and others, and OneSpot recommended I also add blogs from Assetbar and Twitter. Very cool.

OneSpot is extremely flexible, letting me schedule updates as frequently as 60 minutes apart, letting me customize the memetracker's look and feel, or even to add up/down voting recommendations or comments. At a time when news organizations like the Associated Press are throwing up roadblocks in how you link to or highlight their content, why not use OneSpot to make your own memetracker using sources you trust?

Giving a Service Wings By Pushing Them from the Nest

For those of us blogging who like to break the news by announcing new services, and using our site as their platform to debut, it can be tempting to pull an "old world" journalism mentality and claim that topic as "our turf", resenting anybody else who tries to step in and steal the thunder by posting the news first, or even feeling betrayed if the entrepreneur takes the news somewhere else. But I've seen that after what I consider an incubation period, the fastest-growing services do best when I can step back and let them take their first steps away from the nest, as they engage with other bloggers, gaining them a new audience and greater exposure.

In this analogy, it can be nerve-wracking to see the little ones as they leave the nest. I worry the new caregivers might not see them in the same way I do. The new influencer might be cruel or may not recognize their talents. But to try and protect them by keeping them in the nest could stunt their growth.

As mentioned in yesterday's popular post, the first stage of being an early adopter can at times be indistinguishable from the service's PR or Marketing firm, as you try to make a product you like extremely visible. You've no doubt seen me do this, as I'll not just help by introducing a product, but keeping you posted on its updates, from Assetbar to ReadBurner, FriendFeedMachine, RSSmeme and Toluu.

But there comes a time when the right thing to do is let go, when the service has gained such momentum that I instead suggest the developer reach out to other sites to get a broader perspective and more exposure, so that their service is less tied in with me, and seen, instead as more of the broader landscape.

Don't get me wrong. I love exclusives, and part of my journalism background makes the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I know that someone who might be considered competition is writing about the same topic at the same time with the same deadline. But lately, for services that have gotten some traction, I've opted out of story opportunities and encouraged the developer to get some new voices talking instead.

A prime example of this was with Toluu yesterday. On Wednesday, Caleb Elston reached out to me with some great new service updates, including details on subscriptions within Toluu by feed, and story popularity, in part helped by AideRSS. I told Caleb that instead of waiting for me, to take his outreach to the next level, and it worked, without question. Yesterday ended up being a record-setting day for Toluu, after what Hutch Carpenter called a great example of social media marketing, by participating and reaching out to bloggers and following Toluu references on both FriendFeed and Twitter.

Similarly, RSSmeme announced options to find similar sharers of data to you, and integrated widgets on each page that show top tags and sharers for that blog or topic. See: Using RSSmeme To Find Similar Sharers: Louis Gray’s Example. Having just given RSSmeme a ton of credit last Saturday on being the authority on Google Reader sharing notes, I again waved the white flag, and told Benjamin to spread the word. He did, leveraging a custom room on FriendFeed for RSSmeme, to update followers, also adding RSSmeme as a user of the service, and today, leveraging the FriendFeed API to speed up the site.

You can see how other services have taken steps to leave the nest, as other sites, often much bigger than mine, take up the rallying cry:

ReadBurner:
The Inquisitr: ReadBurner Gets Digg Like Features

Shyftr:
Mashable: Shyftr Beats Google Reader with OPML Imports

LinkRiver:
SheGeeks: LinkRiver is My Personal Techmeme

Part of being a good partner to new services is knowing when to let go, and to see if the service has wings. A few weeks ago, I wrote to one pair of entrepreneurs, "Let me know if there's anything else I can do, but I do believe it's going to come down to you guys being more visible." With everything else that's going on, I can't possibly do it all myself. That's why, even though it can be bittersweet on occasion, the right thing to do is let them take a risk and let go. It gives others, like Corvida, the opportunity to do a social media roundup on service updates, and it's best for the community at large.

ReadBurner Podcast Talks Comments, Twitter, FeedBurner Ads

After a few months participating in the Elite Tech News podcast each Sunday evening, I was excited to be invited by Drew Olanoff and Adam Ostrow of ReadBurner to participate in their ReadBurner Weekly Live podcast this evening.

Although I already knew the two guys were sharp from my previous interactions with Drew and Adam via e-mail, Twitter and seeing their blogs, it was absolutely a pleasure to talk with them both about the big issues of the week. My only regret from the call was that Skype and TalkShoe didn't get along all that well, so when you listen, you'll hear me drop off the call four separate times. Frickin' Skype...

Topics included:

• Once again, the diversity of new places to make comments, away from the original blog.
  
• The integration of AdSense and Feedburner to post ads in RSS.
  
• How to bring RSS to the mainstream?
  
• Twitter's continued uptime issues.
  
• Continued improvements to ReadBurner, including chiclets and the addition of a "Breaking News" feature.
  
• What would Techmeme look like without content from the Techmeme leaderboard? (101+).

You can find the archive on the Official ReadBurner Blog or download the MP3 file directly here. It weighs in at 27 megabytes. Be sure you "fast forward" five minutes, as it appears the recording was turned on well too early.

Also, as for the Elite Tech News podcast, the team completed another successful call Sunday, with guest panelist Tamar Weinberg. You can find it on Mashable: Elite Tech News #10: Crickets.

ReadBurner Adds Widgets, Accelerating Shared Items Race

ReadBurner, the popular Google Reader shared items tracker, has recently undergone a series of enhancements making it a must-visit Web utility, enabling Web connoisseurs to find the most popular news items, see posts that are rising in awareness, and learn what sites or individuals are the most actively shared or most active link blog users.

Following the acquisition of ReadBurner from Alexander Marktl by Drew Olanoff, Thomas Connors and Adam Ostrow, the team has buckled down to introduce a new, flashy interface for the site, both on the Web and for iPhones (which works great on my iPod Touch), and on a near-weekly basis, has new updates worth noting.

In the last few weeks alone:
* ReadBurner added a page for "Breaking News"
* ReadBurner added a Breaking news feed on Twitter. (@ReadBurnerRSS)
* ReadBurner started a weekly podcast.
* ReadBurner added support for Netvibes.

Today, ReadBurner is adding a host of widgets, which will undoubtedly be popular in the blogging community, as you can now display how often your content has been shared, how often, as an author, your items are shared, or even how many total shares you've posted to your link blog and seen added to the service.


A ReadBurner widget for shares from louisgray.com.

A ReadBurner widget for all shares on my Google Shared items blog.

The new widgets can be found on any ReadBurner page for an author, a source, or a link blog. From any page, for example, for louisgray.com or "Louis Gray's Link Blog", you will now see a widget in the top right corner with a simple "Get This" button. Click the button, and you're taken to a dedicated page with a single line of JavaScript code, which can be embedded into your blog, just like the extremely popular FeedBurner statistics.


Grabbing the code for embedding into the blog is simple.

The widgets are an interesting salvo in the continued back and forth with Benjamin Golub's similarly popular RSSmeme, which, for now, has a leg up in showing share counts by specific items back to the blog. I for one, will be adding total ReadBurner shares to the blog and keeping the RSSmeme FeedFlare for the posts, until continued innovation from one site or another changes my mind.

Be sure you go get your own widgets at www.readburner.com.

FriendFeed and Google Reader Are One. Sort Of.

Not too long ago, ReadBurner upgraded, including a new tab that essentially added Google Reader in an iFrame, letting you check your RSS feeds without leaving the site. At the time, I openly speculated that I would love it if FriendFeed would do the same thing.

In my fevered brain, FriendFeed could tie in with Google Reader, and let me see if other friends of mine have already "liked" or shared an item. Imagine seeing a feed from TechCrunch, and a little icon on the right saying 5 friends "liked" the item and 6 had "shared" it and there were 3 comments in FriendFeed. So far, the closest solution to this had been Assetbar, but that data, so far is siloed, and the service didn't gain the traction I had hoped.

So... to my rescue came Matt Shaulis (FriendFeed page), who you know from his work on one of my favorite Google Reader alternatives, Shyftr. Matt spun up a quick bookmarklet, which, if you add it to your toolbar, lets you log in to Google Reader while logged into FriendFeed, defaulting to your friends' shared items. See the below screenshot:


(Click for the full screenshot)

Use FriendFeed? Use Google Reader? Want to make sure, unlike Loic Le Meur speculates, that both are here to stay? Use the below bookmarklet:

Drag Bookmarklet to Toolbar: FriendFeedReader

Where Are They Now? A Look at A Dozen Services That Debuted Here

Near the end of 2007, I first came across a service I had hoped would one day challenge Google Reader for the throne of coolest RSS feed reader, Assetbar. With social aspects including shared statistics and comments, it had the potential to become the future of where RSS feed readers were going. While that hasn't yet come to pass, it did mark the first time a service debuted on LouisGray.com.

In the ensuing 9 months or so, I've been lucky enough to either stumble upon, or get engaged with entrepreneurs early enough in the process, such that this site was where they first got started. Some of them have gone on to incredible visibility and success. One has already closed shop. Another looks dormant, and others, somewhere in between. I'll hold off on giving a rating, or "stars" assigned to their success, but believe me, it's tempting.

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Assetbar
Debut: September 17, 2007
Post: Assetbar Set to Launch With Google Reader Inspiration

The Goal: To deliver a next-generation RSS feed reader with integrated commenting, shared link lists, and the ability to see if friends had seen or liked an article.

Status: After gaining the attention of ReadWriteWeb and Mashable, as well as a few follow-up stories here, Assetbar gained several hundred users, but rather than rocketing upward in popularity, issues with the confusing user interface, and prioritizing features over speed had even early adopters not sticking around. The site's gone into something of hibernation and maintenance mode, while the developers consider where to take their participatory social media platform next.

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BlogRize
Debut: April 7, 2008
Post: BlogRize Builds A Community Around Your Blog and its Readers

The Goal: Build a community around a blog, and find new interesting items.

Status: Recently profiled by ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez, who is everywhere, BlogRize has hundreds of users joining communities like ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and LouisGray.com to see what others like them are sharing and commenting on. Updates so far have been somewhat quiet, thanks to developer Jesse Spaulding's recent move to Seattle.

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LinkRiver
Debut: February 13, 2008
Post: LinkRiver Enters Life Streaming Fray, Focused on Link Blogs

The Goal: To let friends follow shared items activity from multiple people in one place.

Status: LinkRiver has a big fan in Corvida of SheGeeks (LinkRiver Is My Personal Techmeme), and with interesting wrinkles including Attention data, which tracks what you share most often, and the ability to tag items for later viewing, developer Adam Stiles has created a lightweight (in a good way), informative site to find the most popular items of the day, or to see what friends are sharing, without the noise of some other social aggregators.

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MergeLab
Debut: March 4, 2008
Post: Mergelab Emerges to Streamline Friends' Web Updates

The Goal: To follow friends' activity on the Web in a single location.

Status: Mergelab announced last Friday that the site would close down by the end of June. Without revenue, and with competition, the decision was made to exit the game early.

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Rating Burner
Debut: January 30, 2008
Post: Rating Burner Debuts With RSS Feed Ranking, Growth Stats

The Goal: To show the most popular FeedBurner feeds, and daily changes.

Status: While not widely known, Rating Burner is quietly doing its job, adding more and more feeds to its library. The developer even added the option to display a Rating Burner badge on your blog so you can show your own ranking from the site.

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ReadBurner
Debut: January 7, 2008
Post: ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items

The Goal: Find the most common shared items in Google Reader.

Status: ReadBurner took off like a phoenix, but after gaining rave reviews from across the Web, the site's lead developer shut down the site, only to see a trio of entrepreneurs, including Mashable's Adam Ostrow, buy its technology and get it up and running again. ReadBurner 2.0 debuted on April 15th and has continued to innovate, issuing an iPhone version of the site, and today, adding support for shared items from NetVibes.

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RSSmeme
Debut: February 6, 2008
Post: RSSmeme Debuts as ReadBurner Clone

The Goal: Find the most common shared items in Google Reader

Status: RSSmeme took advantage of ReadBurner's downtime, and has more shared link blogs in play than anybody else on the Web. RSSmeme also debuted helpful integration for bloggers who want to show how often their items have been shared, and recently integrated notes from Google Reader.

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Shyftr
Debut: March 4, 2008
Post: Shyftr Offers Social RSS Reading, Including Comments, Rankings

The Goal: Develop a RSS Feed Reader for friends to share favorite items and make comments.

Status: Shyftr recently added OPML importing, on the back of debuting shared link blogs, making it even more competitive with Google Reader, as Mark Hopkins of Mashable and the Download Squad noted. The service still has a way to go to get in the mainstream, and it will take some time for them to escape the dubious honor of getting Bitchmemed last month, but they continue to work hard.

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SocialMedian
Debut: April 8, 2008
Post: Former Jobster CEO's Social|Median Incubating in Alpha

The Goal: A social news service, personalized based on your favorite topics.

Status: As mentioned Tuesday, SocialMedian is seeing strong growth, even in their alpha stage, growing to 2,599 alpha users, as of this post. The growth in the user base has resulted in a higher amount of interesting news, more clipped items, and the GUI has gotten much stronger in the last month.

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TheStatBot
Debut: May 1, 2008
Post: The StatBot Launches to Analyze Blog and Web Trends, Statistics