The answer is not a better RSS Aggregator
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Before I discuss this new product idea I am turning over in my mind, I want to say a few things about why I keep working in this area. I mean there are so many people working on aggregators, and after all Microsoft is building it into IE, and it’s been in FireFox for a while. Why bother?
I’ve thought all along, and I still believe, that all these blog readers, or aggregators, or whatever you want to call them are really important but still very primitive.
I’ve also said and still believe that all of them, BlogBridge included, are very much generation zero, and are more or less following the same pattern, in a way set by email readers.
The reason I am very bullish on this space (and I use that vague term on purpose) is that there is so much useful, general, non geek, high quality information out there, that such a large percentage of people have no idea about, and yet if they could see it they would devour it.
Just recently I was reading Discover Magazine, and I came across an interesting article that mentions that mathematician Peter Woit has a blog called “Not Even Wrong.” I’ve not looked at that yet, but, I am intrigued. Every day I come across an example of that.
So I say: Are you interested in Politics? Geology? Mathematics? Joint Ventures? Model Airplanes? Medicine? Rock and Roll? I can guarantee that I can find information on your passion that you will want to look at as often as you look at your magazine subscriptions.
This is my belief: great stuff, regularly written, by experts in every field, is there (supply.) There is a large class of people who would stand up and cheer if we could bring that information to them easily. (demand)
I want to help bring those two together.
The answer is not a better aggregator. It’s something else.
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October 11th, 2006 at 3:04 am
What you’re talking about is Digg, isn’t it?
October 11th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Hmm, perhaps a good point, although if it is then of course I won’t bother with it
But Digg is still way too geeky I think and also one of the things I am interested in (I think) is to have this new product/service (if it is ever built) have a built in knowledge of where the best feeds are (for example) about international travel or high fashion or political news. In a way it’s more related to http://www.findory.com then Digg, although your digg point is a good one.
October 11th, 2006 at 11:28 am
Pito:
What are your thoughts concerning Top Ten Sources? Are they not doing something similar?
October 11th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Tim, that’s a good pointer too. There are some real analogies.
Although thinking about what would work best for my target user (super non tech, barely knows email etc.) perhaps delivering the content as email bulletins might be better. Initial subscription settings would still be a web page but the results go to your inbox. I know it’s still vague, we are playing with ideas.
October 11th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Sounds interesting. Go ahead …
Search matrix, RSS, microformats … I think the future still must be based on structured information (XML, microformats, …). The novelty and needed thing you (Pito) are talking about must create transparency for the not so web savvy reader. I also believe that the River Of News concept is NOT superior to the classical print media structure (sections, ressorts).
The RoN concept is great for news savvy people who skim loads of information but don’t need a section structure as helping hand but are addicted to the ‘be informed first’ effect.
Somebody interested in a topic will love to receive relevant information ordered by authority and subject. The chronological order provided by blogs is NOT what those people need.
A very interesting side aspect is granularity. Combing through the available information (archives) needs a granular structure provided as clickable metadata added to the main article. The goal is to achieve transparency without the need to fill out complicated research forms. Examples known from blogs and bibliography: sections, categories, keywords, tags, excerpts, abstracts and last not least contextual advertising.
Needed is a tool which can be fed with a raw online article and which will be able to auto-add the above meta-structures and meta-data. Mix raw article with the auto-generated enrichment will result in an almost perfect resource ready to be published.
Oh, a last word: I am absolutely against email bulletins! RSS and OPML is the way (distribution channel) to go today.
Well, a lot of thoughts … Thanks for bringing up this topic!
October 12th, 2006 at 8:53 am
Thanks for the detailed comment!
>>> I also believe that the River Of News concept is NOT superior to the classical print media structure (sections, ressorts).
Hmm. Interesting point, I think I agree with you.
>>> Somebody interested in a topic will love to receive relevant information ordered by authority and subject. The chronological order provided by blogs is NOT what those people need.
Another good point.
>>> Oh, a last word: I am absolutely against email bulletins! RSS and OPML is the way (distribution channel) to go today.
Why? If my objective is to give a totally non-technical user what is equivalent to a daily newspaper of great content, isn’t their inbox the place where they are most likely to find it?
October 12th, 2006 at 10:03 am
I knew you would jump on that sentence
It is a black and white sentence. A simple Yes/No statement without considering that both possibilities can coexist.
Email bulletins or newsletters are great reminders. But the main sense in consuming news through the inbox must be some kind of ‘management summary’: Short, precise and giving meta information like numbers, links and resumes on max two pages.
The main argument against newsletters is their ‘block’ approach. You get a block of frozen information which misses the online touch and the granularity of single elements. Also this block of information is most likely consumed in a mail reader which doesn’t offer features like tabs or all the nifty extensions which allow i.e. to mark a word and do a translation or a search.
If that email bulletin gets too long readers will start to ignore it. My experience tells me that I start to feel annoyed if I know that the new newsletter will bring reading ‘work’ because of its length.
An output I find attractive is some kind of PDF export. I know all the reasons against PDF but this will be the only form (!) to offer a newspaper like output. BUT let the reader skim the articles online first, let HIM mark an article or even single article elements (granularity!) interesting in some ways (link, abstract, photo, full article) and in a last step let such a new system export the marked articles as PDF and offer that for download and/or email. Two advantages: This way a reader can rate articles and build up a more sophisticated profile. The PDF will be his personal archive copy and can also be distributed as his personal newsletter.
But I have to excuse for elaborating on the output already. Maybe we should first discuss the input?
December 27th, 2006 at 3:17 am
Hi Pito,
You probably saw my post to the meme you started:
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/10/20/the-rss-experience/
I just saw a actual desktop widget that allows RSS Reading, it’s called Zebtab…and there’s no mention of RSS
http://consumingexperience.blogspot.com/2006/12/zebtab-review.html
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2006/10/27/is-zebtab-rss-for-the-masses/