Filtering RSS Through Your Social Web 77
museumpeace writes "Cory Lok assesses the methods, competition and prospects of Rojo, a venture-funded startup RSS aggregator. The brief article is interesting to me because it tries to explain how this and similar uses of a social network harnessed by web search techniques can perform relevance-tuning that will save me from drowning in the tidal wave of blogged newsbits that I find so addicting. They are using a viral marketing approach of spreading membership by invitations from existing members."
"viral"? (Score:2, Insightful)
They are using a viral marketing approach of spreading membership by invitations from existing members.
I wouldn't call that "viral", it's controlled growth very much like gmail. These people want inclusion, the membership is not being forced on them.
Disagree.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a bit like setting up a giant bag-o-toys on a playground and telling kids that they can only dip their hand in the bag if some other kid invites them. Something about human nature makes you want to participate dammit! You don't want to be the only one left out, even if the toys suck.
Just my $0.02
This sounds more like... (Score:1)
"We've got this cool new software and YOU CAN'T USE IT, unless we let you!"
This _IS_ viral marketing. (Score:1, Insightful)
This method also turns its current members into sales reps for the company. People with accounts are viewed as being part of "in" crowd, and gives them reason to share the product with others. (They'll feel cool.) Seriously, I know people who were just "okay" on GMail, but were very excited about handing out invitations.
It gives geeks like us the feel
Re:"viral"? (Score:3, Informative)
You're wrong. It most certainly is viral. As someone in advertising, allow me to explain what the jargon means. "Viral marketing" means that it gets marketed via word of mouth. It doesn't matter if its controlled or not, it simply means that people hear about it from each other instead of traditional advertising.
But I have no friends (Score:1, Funny)
Re:But I have no friends (Score:1)
not a good day today (Score:2)
Re:not a good day today (Score:1)
The Eric Cartman marketing method (Score:3, Interesting)
Repeat after me (Score:1, Funny)
I am addicted to the web if I need rss to manage my daily browsing.
I am addicted to the web if I need rss to manage my daily browsing.
Re:Repeat after me (Score:2, Funny)
Investorial? (Score:5, Funny)
Venture-funded (ding!)
RSS (ding!)
aggregator (ding!)
social network (ding!)
so addicting (ding!)
viral marketing (ding!)
Damn. All I need is "I find Rojo intriguing and I wish to invest in its newsletter to get a Free iPod", and I can yell "BINGO!"
Re:Investorial? (Score:2)
Yes, indeed. The near-perfect buzzword compliant, content-free post.
Ah, good (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ah, good (Score:2)
A fool and his money are soon venture capital.
-- someone's sig.
As a matter of fact I dug out my theory of economic froth at dinner the other day -- the idea that things like the web boom are symptoms of excess wealth that can be put to no useful purpose.
It's similar to my posts on slashdot where...oops, I'll explain later.
Social networking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Social networking (Score:2)
Re:Social networking (Score:1)
Social networking == VC wishful thinking (Score:2)
This idea that you can set up a server, pull people into a "network", make said network "indispensible", and then extract vast quantities of money for membership in this network sounds good, too good in fact. Its a great model for VCs but meaningless to most users. Besides dirty chat and file sharing, there is very little to bring people back to these sites again and again,
Re:Social networking == VC wishful thinking (Score:1)
However, a prominent counter-example is ebay.
Re:Social networking (Score:2)
Re:Social networking (need app that help _users_) (Score:2)
Hence Simpy (URL below) - you don't need to maintain anything there, just save a page when you like it, and find it when you need it. The social/relational stuff is a nice side-effect of taggi
A quick check of google (Score:5, Interesting)
The Semantic Social Network [downes.ca]
I've been thinking about this for a while. I'm not sold on the concept of belonging to a social network site. There was a time when people registered their web sites on directories like Yahoo, until Google figured out a way to spider the web and present relevant stuff to you without requiring pre-registration. I'm not sure requiring membership with a site is going to work, without some sort of protocol to let different sites work with each other.
Eventually, everyone will have their own blogs, and will embed some identity info into them. We're seeing the semantic web emerging from what people want to do on the web instead of from people trying to classify everything.
Now an interesting issue is balancing anonymity with community. What would be neat to see would be ways of embedding different types of content in your blog and giving each type different accessibility levels. You'd have your deep thoughts available to the public, but still be able to share stories about your kids with your inner circle.
RSS, Friend-of-a-friend, cryptography, semantics
Re:A quick check of google (Score:1)
Re:A quick check of google (Score:2)
Re:A quick check of google (Score:2)
My views (Score:3, Interesting)
Time is running out (Score:3, Insightful)
As the article notes at the end, Rojo's best gamble is to provide RSS services for already established social networking companies before Friendster et. al. figure out that adding friend-weighted RSS feeds really isn't that hard.
6 degrees of separation (Score:2)
Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:4, Interesting)
If I want people to know about something, I'll send them a link or put it on my own blog. Making it happen automatically would only incline me to be very self-conscious about my casual browsing habits on this "social" network. I don't always want to be that social.
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:2)
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:2)
Re:Sorry, I don't buy it. (Score:2)
blogger addiction... (Score:2, Informative)
slashdot addition is perfectly normal, though.
Trying too hard with multiple hip concepts (Score:2)
Really, how many users have to filter RSS blogs through social networks (peer review)??? As it stands no one has explained how to keep these social networks going past the "gee whiz" phase - see Friendster that has turned into a classic bitrot site. Furthermore what motivation is there for me to spend time assessing the viability of these feeds and performing
Re:Trying too hard with multiple hip concepts (Score:2)
Oh, and I see that Hemos considers you a friend [slashdot.org], so I know you're not just trolling.
Social networks make it possible to collectively filter information, while keeping the spammers out.
RSS is next the big thing. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:RSS is next the big thing. (Score:1)
Google News gets me all the headlines, sorted, categorised, prioratised and without corporate sponsorship biasing every article the same way.
Re:RSS is next the big thing. (Score:1)
Re:RSS is next the big thing. (Score:2)
http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.php [justinpfister.com]
Re:RSS is next the big thing. (Score:2)
Google News gets me all the headlines, sorted, categorised, prioratised and without corporate sponsorship biasing every article the same way.
What both you and MishaGray are getting at is that there really is precious little else worthwhile that is being done in the "aggregate" arena. What you mostly see is software that allows you pull feeds into a common collection, which is of questionable advantage. Beyond Google (and this dinky site [subsume.com] of ours :-), there isn't much other software that is actually t
Timely Analogy Award Winner! (Score:1)
save me from drowning in the tidal wave
APPLAUSE!
They should aggregate based on preferences (Score:1)
Re:RSS difference (Score:1, Interesting)
a la Firefox help. RTFM
Not if its on Rojo (Score:2, Informative)
Multiply! (Score:2)
Try it. You won't be disappointed.
Blah (Score:2)
I'm almost tempted to restrict them from accessing my blog until they give me an invite, damnit!
Re:Blah (Score:2)
Just a bunch of portugueses spamming along...
Explicit linking not always most insightful (Score:2)
Don't respect robots.txt (Score:1)
There is absolutely no justification for ignoring my robots.txt. And to add insult to injury, they deny people like me, who apparently drive the content on their site, from getting
Use the entire community, not just your friends (Score:2)
What might work better is reaching out to the entire community -- beyond just your friends -- finding the people like you, and having them recommend interesting articles.