Fri 3 Aug 2007

Filtering RSS Feeds?

Blog friend Dave has posted today about AideRSS. Apparently it's the new sliced bread for overwhelmed feed readers.

I am not an AideRSS user. However, having read Dave's description and spent 15 minutes browsing their site, I don't get it. This seems like an unlikely mish-mash of subscription services and "long tail" services. One of the perceived advantages of sites like del.icio.us or, say, programming.reddit.com — to pick a sub-category of reddit I use a bit — is that they make note of needles in the haystacks of endless blogs and websites. In contrast, an RSS feed from a site is generally only worth subscribing to if you like that site in a general manner.

Selective items from particular RSS feeds you have chosen feels like limiting the haystack size in the hope of finding more needles. Statistical sampling doesn't work like that. It also presumes that the scoring methods used by AideRSS align well with the user's preferences. I'll give the last point, though, since their selection of seed sites for scoring look representative for the RSS-consuming information junkie.

I guess it depends on the type of feeds you pass a service like this. Something super-general, like everything published by a newspaper site might provide sufficiently broad coverage, I guess.

One cannot argue with success and if people find this type of service useful, all the best to them. But I still don't get it. It feels like a more generic syndication feed of "best of" items might be better.

Topics: technology