I’m running a little ongoing experiment using the rooms feature on Friendfeed. Friendfeed recently added the ability to add RSS feeds into rooms. Being a big RSS and Google Reader junkie, I decided to start a room dedicated only to an individual’s Google Reader feed. I posted on Friendfeed asking for people’s Google Shared URL, there was close to 40 replies with feeds for the room. I created this room on Friendfeed and unloaded the 38 various Google Reader shared feeds.
The room has 38 members, or better yet editors. Thirty eight editors handpicking the best content that they deem worthy of sharing. Most of the editors share the same interests as myself, which in turn enhances the value of the feed for the individuals in this test group.
Here is some feedback on this experiment:
This is a pretty cool idea, a whole set of hand picked stories – and you can’t even directly tell who they are coming from, so no biased clicking. – Tim Hoeck
I’m adding this rooms feed to my Google Reader. Nice to meet you.- Erhan Erdogan
With that being said, here are some of my thoughts on this early ongoing experiment:
Positives
- Excellent pool of feeds from some of the brightest minds & bloggers in the social media blogosphere.
- Approx 35 of the feeds are technology/social networking/media oriented.
- Has potential to be a replacement for Google Reader.
- Can be highly customized with feeds from select editors.
- The room has an RSS feed that can be added into any RSS reader.
- No need to subscribe to multiple websites feeds. Let the room editors do it for you.
Negatives
- Duplication of content
- Stories with a note, get imported into the room as a comment. On Friendfeed it shows me as the person who left the comment, not the actual person who noted it in their Google Reader.
This will only work with a large pool of Google Shared feeds. The pool has 38 feeds currently. Want to participate? Post your Google Shared URL on the comments on this blog, or on the Freindfeed thread.
Related posts:
Great idea and good post. I had a couple thoughts about this, but decided on doing an experiment of my own. Instead of just commenting here, I've written a post myself, which I'll smear out across Twitter, Friendfeed, etc. In addition to Disqus and the lot, I'm anxious to see where the conversation will bloom, what'll get picked up.
Read my response here — oh, and I'm long past stats and ego surfing, so it's not a way of luring people to the old blog
Turned out to be a good idea Mike — activity in the room is definitely picking up, hopefully we can get some interesting discussions going.
Cool experiment! here's mine: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/15218633955...
Here's mine https://www.google.com/reader/shared/1220927840...
sarah and mike, both added.
Great idea and good post. I had a couple thoughts about this, but decided on doing an experiment of my own. Instead of just commenting here, I’ve written a post myself, which I’ll smear out across Twitter, Friendfeed, etc. In addition to Disqus and the lot, I’m anxious to see where the conversation will bloom, what’ll get picked up.
Read my response here — oh, and I’m long past stats and ego surfing, so it’s not a way of luring people to the old blog
Turned out to be a good idea Mike — activity in the room is definitely picking up, hopefully we can get some interesting discussions going.
Cool experiment! here’s mine: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/15218633955...
Here’s mine https://www.google.com/reader/shared/1220927840...
sarah and mike, both added.
Cool idea. If I ever start using Google Reader's sharing functionality on a consistent basis, I'll give you my URL as well.
Cool idea. If I ever start using Google Reader’s sharing functionality on a consistent basis, I’ll give you my URL as well.