While some noisy Web pundits have declared RSS dead, smart developers see expanded social sharing and connections as an opportunity to rethink news consumption, leveraging RSS as a utility and making it the backbone for new services. Amidst the rise of Twitter, Facebook and other networks, we've seen the launch and rapid adoption of products like Pulse, Feedly, Ninua, Flipboard and others who have taken the geeky parts out of RSS and presented new ways to consume news.

A new site you've never seen, which I've been watching since January, has finally cracked open the door with exclusive invites to its own take on RSS with social connections. The name is NewsDrink, which starts on the Web and will soon follow on with dedicated applications for mobile phones and tablets.




Based in Bangalore, India, NewsDrink, like other RSS readers, can import an OPML file, synchronize with Google Reader, have you add feeds one by one, or select from their extensive topic-driven directory. Content can be viewed by individual source, or sorted for recency, with newest items at the top.


Unlike Google Reader, which is biased toward full feeds, and has a wide array of sharing functionality and statistics for your own activity as well as the blog feeds themselves, NewsDrink favors a more minimalist approach, with feed items truncated to give you a glimpse into the story, but push for downstream views if interested. That said, you can make comments or likes directly on items that flow through your view in NewsDrink, and this site activity is collected on your central profile - which also displays feeds you add or delete.


NewsDrink goes beyond Google Reader when it comes to social, reminding me a lot of RSS projects gone by, including AssetBar in 2008 and the follow-on Shyftr, best known for its aggregation of comments on full feeds, which in my view got them in an unfair share of trouble. You can follow friends on NewsDrink, find friends from Twitter and Facebook who are using the service, and see their activity. Find a feed they are reading that you like but don't have? Add it to your NewsDrink. You can also see people they follow and have an opportunity to discover new people with similar interests - much like the promise of Toluu, another 2008 debut that has seen its founder move on to new projects.


Does the world need another RSS reader besides Google Reader, or does the world need RSS at a time when it seems that social sharing is king? I still think there is a place, absolutely. One that is built from the start to be social, but also allows you that solitary approach to get in and read your feeds, could be a solid alternative. NewsDrink is a just starting, so if there are some UI bugs that are not your favorite, or missing functionality, be sure to let them know. It's all part of the fun of beta products.

To get into NewsDrink, use the invite code of "louis", without quotes. There should be enough invites for everyone. You can find NewsDrink at http://www.newsdrink.com.

Three years in technology can be an eternity. I marvel that just over three years ago, I was telling you that "RSS Is a Demanding Mistress", showing off a screen capture of my NetNewswire application, powered by Newsgator. At the time, as I complained about having nearly 100 articles to read, I didn't anticipate the impact Google's entering the market with Google Reader would be, and my screenshot now seems quaint. By 2007, I had switched to Google Reader, and despite multiple assaults on Reader in the ensuing two years, you can tell most challengers apart by their epitaph.

In the past few years, I've helped champion more than a few new approaches to the RSS feed reader market, each with its own approach to making the stand-alone process more social. First there was Assetbar, who had tremendous technology, but a clunky interface, and never really got off the ground. Not too long afterward, we saw Shyftr debut, but following a highly visible controversy over shared comments on full feeds, the company eventually shut down their interesting product as well, moving instead to RSS filters. Even last week we saw NewsGator turn off their synching functionality, pointing customers to Google Reader. Yes, NetNewsWire is still around, and now points to Google Reader, but it's pretty much a legacy app at this point. (In my opinion, of course)


Isn't this cute? (From back in 2006 on NetNewsWire)
While some are debating RSS' role in a new world of real-time information discovery, there is no question that Google Reader has won this specific battle. If I exclude FriendFeed data from my own FeedBurner statistics, the combination of Google Reader and iGoogle accounts for 84 percent of all my RSS readers. In contrast, NewsGator is below 4 percent, and BlogLines checks in at just above 2 percent, with PostRank and Netvibes coming in at just over 1 percent each. Mice nuts.


My FeedBurner Stats Show Google Reader and FriendFeed Dominate
That's not to mean the RSS ecosystem is in anything resembling a freefall. The recent launches of My6sense for the iPhone, looking to find the most relevant content, and Lazyfeed for real-time blog search by topic, show me that not only is innovation alive and well, but blogs and RSS are key components in creating new products. And while Caleb Elston has been quiet of late, I am still using Toluu every day to share my OPML, and keep track of new blogs I am adding to Reader. Also, Feedly, which builds upon Google Reader with some very interesting social options, continues to plug away, gaining loyal fans.

But just think of what's happened over the last three years.

In 2006, folks like Jeremy Zawodny reported Bloglines' share at between 30 and 50 percent. Steve Rubel cited a Pheedo report showing Bloglines "slipping" from 37 percent to 30. Go back far enough, and you can see it even had the majority of the market way back in 2004, according to ReadwriteWeb.

By early 2007, Hitwise said that Bloglines had three times the market share of its nearest competitor, which was Rojo. Interestingly, that report mentioned Google Reader in passing, saying "as of the week ending 1/13/07, it had only 1/13 of the market share of visits of Bloglines." That's right. One thirteenth the share of Bloglines. I should mention that not everybody saw the gulf that wide, as others, including Bob Lee reported the two were in a practical dead heat the next month.

The last two years have been all about Google Reader, as the search leader and RSS distribution leader, through the acquisition of FeedBurner, also became the RSS consumption leader. Rojo disappeared in July of 2008, and Bloglines' own stumbles made it that much easier to switch, forcing Marshall Kirpatrick of ReadWriteWeb to say, "Do you really want Google to nail down complete dominance over the world of RSS? We sure don't."

The onetime debate about whether Google Reader is number one or not is pretty much gone, and Newsgator's turning off their online synching essentially throws in the towel. The once promising Feedeachother.com has turned off its lights. Shyftr and Assetbar aren't coming back. A new entrant called Fever is interesting, but looks more like My6sense than a traditional client. RSS is powering aggregation sites like FriendFeed, which in theory, provides 30 to 40 percent of my feed reader count, but when it comes to stand alone, all must stand in awe of Google Reader, for to do battle is futile.

A year into the service's head to head fight with Google Reader and others to make an advanced RSS reader, the Shyftr team has essentially thrown in the towel on their first plan, changing course to let you filter your own content and receive specific news you want to see, with less of that you don't. Their new RSS filter tool, which debuted today, lets you create any number of filters, by author, by title, or by keywords, from a wide number of preselected blogs, or those you add yourself, and roll your own RSS feeds.

Today, when you subscribe to an RSS feed, it's essentially an all or nothing bet. By subscribing to my site, for instance, you are going to get every article I write about Apple even if you love Windows. You are going to get additional posts by the other writers on the site. And you can't dodge posts on Twitter and FriendFeed, even if you're sick of hearing about them.

Shyftr is looking to help, and even comes loaded with some example filters to get you started, including: LouisGray.com Posts from Louis Gray: http://alpha.shyftr.com/f/sux0ju/

Browsers (Chrome + IE + Safari + Firefox): http://alpha.shyftr.com/f/gycxxn/

TechCrunch Posts from Michael Arrington: http://alpha.shyftr.com/f/4x545a/

iPhone Titled Posts: http://alpha.shyftr.com/i3qzmd

But the fun comes when you start to make your filters, such as:

Posts from Mashable and VentureBeat Without Twitter In the Title: http://alpha.shyftr.com/f/qiroqp/

Posts on LouisGray.com That Were Not By Me: http://alpha.shyftr.com/f/bjzbpo/

Posts that Start with "Porn": http://alpha.shyftr.com/f/al35fd/

Posts by Om Malik on GigaOM: http://alpha.shyftr.com/f/dp2drb/

Posts that mention "Robert Scoble": http://alpha.shyftr.com/f/fq8dgb/


Setting Up a Filter that Avoids Twitter and Facebook
Over the last few months, Shyftr has been making significant changes, ditching the reader, and building a customized newspaper (like MeeHive), powered by your favorite topics and sources. But the new RSS filter takes personalization to a new level. You can find the new approach at http://alpha.shyftr.com and you can find the filter tool here: http://alpha.shyftr.com/filter/


Shyftr-Powered RSS Filters for LouisGray.com
And the fun doesn't stop there. The company has set up new "Publisher" accounts, targeted at multi-author and multi-site blogs, to help authors distribute personalized feeds, by author, by topic and by site. I can see mega-blog sites like Mashable, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and CenterNetworks looking into this option, as I will be, and I've been supplied with a handful of invites from those who are intrigued.

You can check out the new Shyftr at http://alpha.shyftr.com. Start your own filters here: http://alpha.shyftr.com/filter. You can also start with a set of pre-loaded tech blogs here: http://alpha.shyftr.com/filter/popular/

Google Reader, the RSS feed engine that has become a major hub in my daily information gathering, pulling in feeds from the hundreds of blogs and Web sites I follow, is taking a step forward in terms of making the service more social, by integrating private conversations between friends. With today's release, every post and every share has an option to add a comment, which will be displayed to your friends who you are connected to.

Google Reader, which started out as a data silo, where you could passively read your news in isolation, has since expanded to include shared link blogs, the addition of notes, and the ability to follow friends and their items within Reader. Items from my shared link blog play a critical role in populating my profile on a variety of social services, including Socialmedian, FriendFeed and Facebook, as well as social news sites including RSSmeme and ReadBurner.

And now, you can make comments and have a conversation with friends, without having to e-mail articles out, and without having your private conversations aired in public on the original blog.


Making a comment on a shared item in Google Reader


The comment, added to a shared item in Google Reader
Last year, we saw a great deal of controversy around publishers like Shyftr, who, at the time, ran a service that displayed comments along with full feeds. In that case, many blog owners felt that Shyftr was potentially making money (through ads) on their content, and hijacking comments. The Google Reader team, who I met with today at their headquarters in Mountain View, is very keen to do the right thing, and is not confusing public, centralized, comments with the private conversations available in today's release. And, so far, there are still no ads.

If you are a Google Reader user, you can see a new item called "Comment View" below "Friends Shared Items". If friends have made comments you haven't seen, the item will be in bold. You don't yet have a parenthetical number showing how many comments are left unread, as you do with total available items. (1000+ anyone?), but you can see if conversations are happening, either on your shared items or those of your friends.

As a Google Reader junkie, I was worried that conversations happening in my shared feeds would bump them back into my "unread" items and make me have to see items more than once. But Google Reader is not doing that. Read items stay read, but are available in the "Comment View".


A Popular Comment Thread in Google Reader


The Expanded Comment Thread in Google Reader
As you make comments within the shared items of Google Reader, those comments are visible to all friends of the original person who shared the item - and you can see comments by other people on those items, even if you are not friends with them yourself, but unlike Notes, they aren't exportable to services like FriendFeed, so they stay internal to the Reader.

You can see which friends are connected to you, as their names will be links to their Google profile, and those who are not friends display only a gray avatar. And today's post by the Reader team clarifies that, at launch, this is English-only, and not yet available in the "All Items" feed. But you can probably expect those to come with time.

The new addition is yet another way that Google Reader is looking to get more social. They've come a long way since my original post two years ago now that asked them to integrate trends, recommendations and more social features. And from today's meeting, it's clear much more is coming to what is now clearly the gold standard for the online RSS experience.

Editor's Note: Allen Stern and CenterNetworks are not affiliated with this post or the exchange rates table -- yet. The CN logo has been helpfully borrowed.

In May, Mathew Ingram, Fred Wilson and others said that for non-professional bloggers, comments were how they got paid. The interaction and discussion that takes place on blogs, between the author and the consumer, is what most write for - the conversation. But recent tools that let people comment elsewhere, or interact on the original content in other ways has some saying users' actions simply aren't enough. As much of the conversation moves off the original blog, or people are sharing items in Google Reader or hitting "like" in FriendFeed, they are showing interest, but not engaging, causing some to wish for a simpler time when those services didn't allow users to show passive approval.

One of the more outspoken voices on this topic has been Allen Stern of CenterNetworks, who wrote on this blog earlier this month:

"early adopters are screwing early adopter blogs - period. Clicking share on google reader is not like leaving a comment on the source. Clicking like on ff or retweeting on twitter is not the same as leaving a comment on the source. I will have more on this soon as I think that lazyness has slowly ruined what was something beautiful."

And while he and I don't always line up with our beliefs on the same spot in the blog evolution chart, there is no question that some activities do more to encourage the original author and their content than do others.

In that spirit, here is the first attempt at an exchange rate for interacting with blogs. As Allen has been a chief proponent of giving original authors their due, I believe the unit of metric is best labeled as a "CN", in honor of CenterNetworks. It's also no coincidence you could call these "C Notes" or "Comment Notes".

To start, I argue that a comment on the original author's blog post should be counted as "1 CN", to establish a baseline.


Actions that are worth more than 1 CN, depending on one's network size and influence, include:

• Making a comment on the original blog, then blogging about that discussion on your own blog. (10 CN)
  
• Writing a new blog post on the same topic and linking back to the original author as the source. (5 CN)
  
• Submitting the blog post to StumbleUpon with a strong description and good tagging. (3 CN)
  
• Submitting the blog post to Digg, Reddit, or Hacker News. (2 CN)

Actions that are worth between 1/2 CN and 1 CN, depending on one's network size and influence, include:

• Retweeting the item on Twitter. (.8 CN)
  
• Digging an already submitted story. (.6 CN)
  
• Adding a vote on Reddit, Hacker News, or Mixx. (.5 CN)

Actions that are worth less than 1/2 CN, depending on one's network size or influence, include:

• Posting the item natively to FriendFeed. (.4 CN)
  
• Posting the item to Socialmedian or Strands. (.3 CN)
  
• Posting the item to Facebook. (.25 CN)
  
• Adding the item to your Tumblr blog. (.25 CN)
  
• Sharing the item in Google Reader. (.25 CN)
  
• Adding the item to your Delicious. (.2 CN)
  
• Adding a comment on the original item on FriendFeed. (.2 CN)
  
• Liking the item on FriendFeed. (.1 CN)
  
• Adding a comment to a reshare of the item on FriendFeed. (.1 CN)
  
• Liking a reshare of the item on FriendFeed. (.05 CN)
  
• Adding a comment on the item in Shyftr. (.05 CN)
  
• Adding a comment on the item in Facebook. (.05 CN)

These exchange rates show current market valuations, and are subject to change, based on the increase and decrease in popularity of associated networks and the sway of conventional opinion. Rates quoted are valid as of November 23rd, 2008, and were determined by a non-scientific measure of effort, influence and reach of the aforementioned external sites and activities.

As your activity gets further and further away from the original blog post, and the blog post becomes less of the story, but the third-party service gets to be more of the story or the destination, it delivers less perceived value to the original author, be it psychological, social, or in some cases, actually financial. While some of us early adopters are all too happy to expand a blog post's reach through our various social networks, and enjoy the new communities that are built there, it's not surprising that those who are seeing less activity on the original source of their stories are feeling something's amiss. I know that as I've gotten busier, I've taken less time to comment on the many blog posts out there, even as I'm making comments on the various social media sites, and sharing like I always have through Google Reader.

So if you want to show your appreciation to the author of a blog you've found particularly insightful of late, or who has opened your eyes to a new topic, don't just take the easy way out and hit "share" as the item flows through your RSS reader, or hit "like" on your social site, but take the extra time to rise up the CN chart and put some food on that blogger's table by making a comment and engaging. Allen and many others will be happy you did.

This Spring, when the tech blogosphere discovered Shyftr, a next-generation RSS reader, had launched with comments on their service, alongside full feeds, you would have thought they'd barged into bloggers' homes in the dead of night, stealing their money, their laptops and punching them around besides. Despite comments from me and others who believed this to be a natural progression of RSS readers and aggregators, their missteps landed them on virtual page one, and they haven't really escaped the many bad things thrown their way since.

But since Shyftr's unfortunate early flub, we have seen sites that are centered around other people's contents continue to grow in popularity, and in many cases, they feature conversations that are native to the service, but don't flow back to the blog. Meanwhile, some are doing more than just featuring a headline, but have excerpts that can at times display the vast majority or the entirety of a blog post. Has the Web collectively grown numb to this, and have we accepted this as "fair use"?

One tech developer wrote me yesterday, highlighting the way many posts were being displayed on the growing news discovery site, socialmedian. He wrote, "I'm sitting here finding example after example of this on Social Median? Do you think people are giving them a pass? Do people not realize that this is happening? Or do they just not care anymore?"

As socialmedian displays upwards of 1,100 characters of any given story, shorter stories could be posted in their entirety, without the original author's permission. As socialmedian now lets its users pull in content from Google Reader shared items and other sources, the author doesn't have to explicitly provide approval for their content to make it to the site. And on that site, users can engage in conversations around the content, without that data being ported back to the originating blog.

Some examples of these short stories (plus conversations) on socialmedian are here:

• Original story on Twitterati: Twitter Revenue Just a Matter of Time
• socialmedian story: Twitter Revenue Just a Matter of Time
• Original story on GHacks.net: Is Windows 7 any different?
• socialmedian story: Is Windows 7 any different?

As Shyftr operated this Spring, before having the Techmeme crowd go after them with pitchforks and torches, socialmedian unifies each article shared to the site in one thread, showing the multiple people who "clipped" it, and unifies the comments in one siloed stream.

So how is this different than the mini-scandal that erupted just over six months ago?

I've been a vocal proponent of socialmedian, and have seen the site take off over the last several months. I have also seen that the site doesn't pull in full feeds, but instead clips longer items. I can't remember the last time I published a blog post that was less than 1,100 characters after all. So I asked Jason Goldberg, socialmedian CEO, to help explain their limits and thinking. He wrote:

"While crawling the sources, we fetch short summary and full content (if exists in feed). While displaying the story on different pages of socialmedian, we first check if we have short description and show it after truncating to a certain limit. If short description is not present for the story we truncate the full content and show it. On the story page we check if we have full content for the story and display it after truncating it to 1100 chars. If we don’t have full description, we show the truncated short description."

Goldberg's response shows the team has given the issue of "fairness" a lot of thought. Unlike Fav.or.it, who believes it has every right to show full feeds and pull in comments from the original blogs, socialmedian consciously clips the data after a certain length. And outside of the story itself, depending on the page, or whether it's in an e-mail alert, these limits are even smaller, between 130 and 325 characters.

So what's fair? We've largely accepted that aggregation and bookmark sites like FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News and others are allowed to post URLs and headlines and allow for conversation. We have largely accepted that it is bad behavior to keep the full content of a post and integrate comments. But in between is a gray area. Can I borrow one paragraph? Two? Can I show the first few graphics you use? At what point does it move from linking and enter the land of scraping?

I would venture a bet that as the social Web continues to evolve, we have gotten more accepting of sites centered around other people's content. I believe you can't undo the move to aggregation sites, and conversations will occur where people want them to, not necessarily on your blog. I believe that sites that offer attribution and a link back to the original source are providing their own sites as a distribution and reference medium, so I don't find fault with services like socialmedian. But it's likely that others aren't realizing their content is getting in the site, and it's not getting out. So what are the standards that one should follow? And do we care anymore?

You can find me on socialmedian here: www.socialmedian.com/louisgray

The crowded world of online RSS feed readers is one that's been dominated by names like Google Reader, Bloglines and Netvibes. But underneath that layer you have a few interesting innovative players, including FeedEachOther, and Shyftr. Shyftr came to prominence this spring, drawing attention for a shared comment stream on linked items, and has been quiet for the last few months as they worked on enhancing their platform. Today, they woke up in a big way, revamping the service, while adding an API, activity streams and widgets for bloggers.

Shyftr's main draws continue to be the same. You can add friends on the service, and see which RSS feeds they are following, or have "Shyfted". You can see who else is reading feeds that you have added, which you can do manually, or by OPML. And despite your reading your feeds in your own space, you can make comments and see them shared with the broader Shyftr community, much like other aggregation tools, including FriendFeed and Strands do. But unlike those services, Shyftr deduplicates, providing a single instance for each unique URL.

In addition to the social aspects of Shyftr, the service offers what they call a Pocket blog, the equivalent of a Google shared links blog, letting you see what friends have found interesting, as they "pocket" new items they discover.


Today's announcements set the foundation for Shyftr and for outside developers to further enhance the service. The API can tap into just about every aspect of the service, except for actually reading feeds, Shyftr reported in a blog post this morning. Among the first introductions is a new activity stream, which shows your activity, or that of your friends, as they "Shyft" new feeds, "Pocket" new items, or make comments.


Like FriendFeed and other social tools, you can filter whether you want to see "Everyone's activity", "Friends activity" or just your own activity. You can also view a single individual's stream if you like.

The last addition are embeddable widgets. Every Web service under the sun has a corresponding widget these days, and Shyftr is no different. You can make widgets for your activity stream, for a specific feed, or to show all activity on Shyftr itself.

As Shyftr founder Dave Stanley wrote in this morning's post, the development of an API was critical to expanding the site's social features, and bringing it to be much more than a passive RSS reader. While the service remains small in the shadows of giants, it has set the groundwork for growth. You can see my profile here: http://www.shyftr.com/profile/louisgray.

Duncan Riley calls the new world of multi-locational blogging and aggregation Blogging 2.0. I call it being flexible and adjusting to how technology advances change how we communicate, collaborate and share, without being set in our ways. And like FriendFeed, Shyftr and other sites before it, Social Median, a new entrant to the social news space, is giving us yet another forum to add comments and discuss blog posts in a smaller social circle, away from the original source. And while Social Median doesn't commit the "cardinal sin" of copying over a full feed and enabling comments that got many in a ruckus over Shyftr last April, the site does provide a headline and an excerpt - good enough for us to get started.

Despite only being available in beta for less than a week, Social Median has been shoehorned into my online news consumption activity, lopped on to my staples of Google Reader and FriendFeed - and each site performs a different critical function.

Google Reader continues to be the lifeblood of my news consumption. It is where I get every single story from hundreds of feeds in rapid fire, and I get to share them to my shared link blog, and to FriendFeed.

FriendFeed is where I'm broadcasting all my online activity from multiple feeds, and engaging with peers about everything from Smugmug to YouTube to Last.fm.

But Social Median is focused. It is all about finding who is creating news, finding new news sources and discussing the topics of the day. Keeping my geek propeller hat on, I am signed up to follow topics like Apple, Blogging, Social Media Watch, Social Networking and Tech News. So far, I've found about 40 different "Newsmakers" in Social Median whom I trust to bring me the news through their submissions and clips.


A Recent Active ReadWriteWeb Story on Social Median
Keeping the topics focused and my peers as the sources makes a combination ready to talk tech. This means rather than passively hitting "share" in Google Reader in isolation, I can browse the 22 comments on ReadWriteWeb's story "Twitter Versus Plurk: The UI Advantage" on SocialMedian (see it here), while only 21 were on the original site. I can add to Social Median's 14 comments on Mashable's Checking Email in the Bathroom? You’re Far From Alone story, which got 18 comments on the original site. (See the Social Median copy) We're also talking about stories from TechCrunch, from ChrisBrogan.com, and even the New Yorker.


A Mashable Story On Social Median With Activity
Blogging 2.0 is about participating everywhere, and understanding that the comments can't be controlled just on your blog. They're moving to micro-communities where people are comfortable discussing your content with peers. In the last few months, we saw talented developers issue applications that let you embed FriendFeed conversations back into your blog (as I am running). Given SocialMedian's early success, it's possible we may see this happen again. I've seen a lot of interesting sites in the lifestreaming and social news space over the last few years, and Social Median is among the few I expect to be using every single day. If you're a blogger who wants to be part of the full conversation, and not just a partial view, make sure you're signed up to Social Median and monitoring or participating. You can find me here: http://www.socialmedian.com/louisgray.

The foundation of RSS is in its syndication (the second 'S'). A feed, published from one location, can be read in a different location, whether it be a feed reader, a blog widget, a lifestreaming application or any number of aggregation services. The simplicity in sharing has also led some to worry about where their content goes when they hit "Publish", as, often, they lose control over where it can go.

Today, RSSmeme's Benjamin Golub, who has developed a tracker for the most popular shared items on Google Reader, saw one unhappy publisher threaten him with legal action after she had found her feed included in the service.

The RSSmeme service utilizes Google Reader's shared link blogs as its underlying database. Those items that receive the most shares from Google Reader rise to the top, and Benjamin, over the last few months, has updated the service to sort by categories, by languages, and highlight the most active users and tags. But one thing he doesn't do is hand-select the content displayed. That's done by the thousands and thousands of people using Google Reader every day, and sharing new items. So when he received a takedown request by e-mail, he was a little surprised.

Talking with him by phone this afternoon, he said the complainant's feed had only been shared two times, by a single sharer. But she had essentially penned an e-mail saying to "remove all content, or I will send a lawyer."

Not eager to have legal trouble, Benjamin removed the offending shares, and recommended to the publisher that her feeds be set to broadcast as partial feeds, not full feeds, assuming she was concerned her content was being stolen, or used in a commercial way. Benjamin told me that he anticipated such a threat might happen once he posted ads on the RSSmeme site, but said with rising Web hosting costs, monetizing in some way soon became necessity.

"When I started RSSmeme, it only cost $20 a month, and (due to site growth), it doesn't cost that much any more," he told me. Since launch, costs have more than tripled, and the Google-sourced ads are used to offset any out of pocket expenses.

While Benjamin considers his options, at the time, he has globally altered settings on RSSmeme to show only the excerpts of feeds, removing the ability to read an entire blog post on the site, the same approach taken by Shyftr back in April when similar complaints arose.

The issue of how RSS-enabled content is monetized, where comments lie, and who has full control over blog entries isn't going away any time soon. Even if Benjamin never hears back from the woman threatening to take him to court, it's definitely got him rattled, and once again is stirring up discussion, as you can see on FriendFeed.

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.

If you take a step back and think about popular Web services, be they RSS feed readers, communications tools, social networks, link aggregators or lifestreams, their core deliverable is data. The way they are differentiating is through enabling that data to be accessed by more people, and manipulated in new ways. But as their popularity grows, with more users, more features, and richer media, be it photographs, music, or video, the data can spiral out of control, demanding larger databases, more servers, faster networks, better caching... you name it. And if they don't deal with it? Death. The services can slow down or crash, and users will move on.

Not every Web service has had the structure, the planning or the money of Google, so not every site can keep going with all features, saving all data, forever and ever.

Twitter's recent struggles keeping up with user growth and resulting issues have been extremely visible. To cope with the load, the microblogging service started whacking features one by one. At various points, Twitter turned off the @Replies tab, removed pagination, reduced the number of times that external services could access its API, and eliminated the use of instant messaging services. Limping along, Twitter has slowly returned to speed, as one by one, most of the pieces have been turned back on, but not everybody is happy about it.

But don't think Twitter's alone. Just yesterday, I logged into SocialThing, a lifestreaming service thought by many to have a better GUI for FriendFeed, and found that it had been forced to scale back its offering as users grew.

Rather than supporting many different services, SocialThing only lets me include Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, with LiveJournal, Pownce and Vimeo also being options. But the many other sites I use? Blocked. They write, "We have had to temporarily disable a few of our services, due to user growth. We hope to have them back up soon!"


At a time when FriendFeed is gaining notoriety for supporting rapid access to the streaming of 35 different services without slowdown, that kind of scaling down can't be good.

For Shyftr, a new RSS reader I've covered quite a bit here, they too are seeing the challenge of user growth. As we saw with Mergelab's closure, the act of tracking thousands of feeds and storing their data for an infinite amount of time can be very challenging. I've already seen Toluu upgrade their server farm, and Shyftr has done the same recently. But more changes are coming to handle the rising user base.

As founder Dave Stanley wrote in a blog post, Notice: System Changes and New Implementations, Shyftr will be removing "a substantial portion of backdated data" which should reduce recent issues with database performance, and let them turn on services that had been disabled thanks to site slow-downs, including search. As he said, "It's time we trim some fat while making the system leaner, more efficient, and better prepared for future growth."

If you have a Shyftr login, see the full post:
Notice: System Changes and New Implementations

I expect that the rules for small companies are different than the rules for big companies. Twitter has gotten such a bad response for its issues in part due to its popularity, and in part due to its criticality for some communications. For smaller sites like Shyftr and SocialThing, users are more likely to be accepting of temporary scale-backs or data removal. But if the big guys like Yahoo!, Google, Apple or Microsoft, took the route of deleting data and reducing features, it'd be likely that we'd see an uproar.

So how should they handle it? Do you, as a user, have an absolute right to all your archives, ever? Do you have the right to demand that once features are added, they never be removed? And do services have an obligation to scale up their hardware and infrastructure to keep you happy? Would you help fund their upgrades? Handling growth is critical, in my opinion, and those best prepared for scaling will leapfrog those who are forced to "lay off" their data. We're wishing Twitter luck, but there are a lot of smaller services struggling with similar issues.

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