This is more of a nice to have feature but it was pretty cool on Google Reader. Reader had the functionality where you could browse for new sites and add them as packages…i.e. a Technology package would contain 10 popular technology websites.
I used this a long long time ago in reader and it helped me find a lot of websites which I follow regularly now. I plan to make another pass on readers version of it before it shuts down, but I think this would be a neat feature to add especially for people new to rss (I just got 4 of my friends to sign up for newsblur who have never used RSS before, so something like this would be great to help them get going).
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I had hoped there was some sort of OPML generator or something on the web.
Sounds like someone should build a web service…
If only someone had a list of all the RSS feeds that people were using, with extra metadata that gave them information about the feed… You could make some sort of automatic curator.
“I want a list of feeds about iPhone apps”
“Here’s your list. Click here to download your OPML. Press this button to import the list into {enter RSS service here}.”
Boom… I’m going to need some venture funding. LOL.
I wonder how far you could get just by looking at what feeds people who follow one site that you are interested in follow? Enough in common and it could get added to the bundle. That wouldn’t work in all cases (tons of bundles would have xkcd, for example), but it could be a cool starting point.
I have big plans in terms of discovery. Reading/training was v1, social was v2, and discovery is going to be v3. As soon as I ship offline for iOS, saved story tags/searching, and a few other features, I get to work on discovery.
Don’t worry, I wasn’t really going to do it.
But, I do see where you could leverage the data you have to make discovery awesome.
Great to hear Samuel. I think a feature like this would truly set Newsblur apart from competitors (even though your 100000 other features do a good job of that already haha)