ReadBurner burst onto the scene in January, offering the first serious attempt to harness the power of shared link blogs from Google Reader, and determine what RSS feed items were the most popular, democratically assigning equal weight to each person's share, instead of relying on proprietary algorithms, like TechMeme, Megite, BlogRunner and others do. But only two months after seeing the site jump into the public conscious, written up by major blogs, from Mashable, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and Lifehacker (See: The Buzz), developer Alexander Marktl has decided to shutter the site, saying he just doesn't have the time to keep the site up and running, with real life getting in the way.

In my opinion, ReadBurner was the #1 new site to debut in January. It filled a necessary gap from today's RSS readers, and transparently identified who was reading my RSS feed, and sharing my items. From the time I first found the site, to weeks afterward, ReadBurner spawned multiple clone sites who similarly saw the potential, from Dennes Abing's Shared Reader to Benjamin Golub's RSSMeme. But February was very quiet for ReadBurner, as Marktl let the site idle, and Golub continued to develop on RSSMeme, adding new features multiple times a week in a seeming virtual two-man arms race.

And now, it looks like RSSMeme has won, with Marktl's goodbye message pointing to Golub's alternative, giving him the nod with "a very well done clone". In fact, Marktl is getting so far out of the business that he's even offering to sell the ReadBurner.com name.

Does this mean ReadBurner failed? Absolutely not, as far as a technology concept goes. The idea of sharing links, and learning what's popular is a central tenet of many of the major sites we've seen debut on louisgray.com in 2008, from LinkRiver to Shyftr to RSSMeme, AssetBar and others. But it didn't capitalize on the early buzz and first-mover advantage, and will go into the all too full dustbin of Web apps history.

For a little history on ReadBurner, see previous coverage:

ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items
ReadBurner's Unplanned Big First Day Shows Real Promise
ReadBurner Goes from 0 to 12,000+ In Four Days
ReadBurner Keeps Improving With Stats and Upcoming Items
ReadBurner Revamps Look, Adds Images Features

In the world of online RSS feed readers, there are the most popular options, like Google Reader, BlogLines and NewsGator, and just below the radar, there lies a group of new entrants to the market, who are looking to change the game through more interactive features - using innovation to potentially gain ground on the big brand names. One interesting entrant is Shyftr, which combines the ease of an online feed reader with the ability to find friends, make shared comments on feed items, and see which are the most popular feeds.


Most popular feeds, and how many have them "Shyfted".

In early beta now, Shyftr has only a few dozen users, and isn't yet overloaded with tech heads, showing a good mix of sports fans, offbeat news and a smattering of gadget lust. What it lacks so far in a thriving user community, it makes up for in potential, echoing some of the pleas I made almost a year ago in 10 Suggestions to Improve Google Reader, when I first asked for the ability to aggregate user statistics, and mirrors some of the work AssetBar has done in this space, through offering comments to RSS items, and shared comments that can be viewed by all the service's users, along with displaying the most frequently commented items or most popularly subscribed feeds.


Shyftr in action, reading posts in line, with feeds on the left.

Dave Stanley, the founder of Shyftr, came up with his concept for the site about a year and a half ago. As he wrote me in an e-mail last month, he wanted to see what feeds his friends were reading, "and have the ability to quickly add a feed of interest to the list of feeds that I read - a social rss reader." But six months after his idea didn't come to pass from anywhere else, he set out on his own, and with a small team, Dave has seen the service develop to where it is today, offering to give users a single place to read all feeds, share with friends, and discover new sites.

As I stated in December, "Reading one's RSS feeds today is a journey of isolation." Shyftr now breaks through that isolation booth, letting you add friends, make comments on their profiles, or even suggest feeds directly from Shyftr. In fact, Dave, now the proud father of a 5-month old daughter, saw my wife and I are expecting twins, and suggested I check out the feed for Babygadget. We'll see about that, but I liked his thinking. From within Shyftr, I too can suggest any subscribed feed to any friend.

The best way to get feeds into Shyftr is to export an OPML file from whatever feed reader you're using now, and copy/paste the best ones in one at a time, for now, or add sites' RSS feeds as you run into them. They're working on full OPML import, but it's not yet here, something I forgot more than once. :-)

When you've added a feed, clicking on the feed name with new items displays the items in line, with all new items from a specific feed in the viewing pane, much like AssetBar or Google Reader. If others have seen an item before you, it will show you're viewing from archive, and if you make a comment, future Shyftrs will see your note, as you would theirs if you weren't first to the game. Most frequently commented items rise to the top of Shyftr's "Popular" page, and if you find somebody who often comments on sites you read, you can add them as a friend, or view their own profile to see their friends or what feeds they read.

Interestingly, you can even choose to read the feeds your friends have added to Shyftr. All of them. As I had added Dave as a friend, I can walk through the blogs he has subscribed to, see which sports teams he is following, or catch up on his gossip sites. This is a feature called "Their Feeds". Clicking back to "My Feeds" takes me back to those I've added.

Shyftr also is very public about recent activity, displaying the most recent blogs added, or "Shyfted", and the most recent comments. The site also keeps a running tab on the most frequently subscribed feeds, which so far is led by CNN and the New York Times. And like AssetBar, Shyftr wants you to not feel overwhelmed by RSS feeds as they rack up. Offering more options than just a "read all" or "mark all as read", Shyftr lets you mark all items read that are older than a certain point, letting you reduce your feed glut down to a smaller time period. AssetBar said this makes you not a liar. Shyftr makes no claims to your morality, but it is a tidy way to clean up.


Choosing to mark some items makes sense if you're behind.

Can Shyftr gain traction in what's obviously becoming a crowded market? Sure, assuming more people know about their service, find the shared comment streams and popular items compelling. Given the site seems a bit overweighted, thus far, with sports fans, and not enough with the Twitter pushing, TechMeme worshipping digerati, there's significant room for growth from those who have been actively calling out for a more interactive way to consume the news and RSS. As the site grows, adding new features, like OPML importing, improved feed searches and additional social features, it could carve out a space for itself.

Feel free to join in. Shyftr is open for business now. No sign-up codes, and no waiting. You can find me at the ID of "louisgray".

In the second half of 2007, Jobster, a popular online recruiting and career site, was hit with news that a number of their executives, including the former CTO, Phillip Bogle, and Alan Steele, the company's fomer VP of Engineering, had left the company to forge their own secretive startup. The pair, joined by Mark Aiken, the company's chief architect, are now ready to unveil their site, Mergelab, which offers a new approach to the increasingly competitive world of Web activity aggregation. (See: Mergelab Company Blog: About Us)

Featuring one of the cleanest interfaces I've seen in this space (and I've seen my share), Mergelab automatically discovers photos (from Flickr and other sources), status updates (i.e. Twitter), blog posts and Amazon.com wishlists from individuals you add to your friend base. To pull down your data, it doesn't require friends to also be Mergelab users, and Mergelab makes it incredibly simple to drill down by user or by specific service, all while giving you a stream populated with friends' recent updates.


Mergelab, after getting one or more data points, gets the rest.
You can add friends to your Mergelab feed one by one, by entering a name and its associated e-mail or Web site address, or you can auto-discover links and news for contacts you have in popular e-mail accounts, including GMail, Yahoo! or Hotmail, similar to other services in the market. However, unlike Spokeo, Mergelab isn't targeted at condensing multiple social networks into one, and unlike FriendFeed, Mergelab isn't yet focused on enabling conversation through comments within a person's updates. Also, in contrast to LinkRiver, Mergelab is more about a person's direct activity, not so much about the items they choose to share.


In this example, I add Chris Brogan's blog and e-mail address to start.


Or, I can import my contacts from an e-mail account.

Now that we've gotten what Mergelab is not out of the way, it's worth highlighting how easily and cleanly the service proactively retrieves updates and adds them to your personal feed. I was able to add friends like Chris Brogan, Jason Kaneshiro, Steven Hodson and Tony Hung, simply by posting their e-mail address. Mergelab went out to do the hard work, and found their blogs, Twitter accounts and associated Amazon wish lists. This is a step beyond FriendFeed's "Imaginary Friend" feature, as Mergelab made the process automatic, not requiring me to post each of their individual IDs for each service.

The resulting Mergelab news feed has some interesting characteristics relative to other sites in this space.



First, as best displayed on co-founder Alan Steele's feed, you can see what type of services a user's friends most frequently use. In addition to Flickr, Twitter, blogs and Amazon, Alan's feed shows friends using LinkedIn, FaceBook, Jobster, iLike, YouTube, Shelfari and many others. Essentially, if it has a feed that's identifiable to an individual, it looks like Mergelab can pick it up.

Second, if consecutive updates are from a single individual, regardless of the service, it groups them under that individual's name. For example, if I enter a blog post, and then send a note to Twitter about it, both are shown under "Louis Gray". with a thin line separating my updates from others. In contrast, most other aggregators would break the activities apart, either by specific action or service, for example saying "Louis Gray posted a blog entry." and then "Louis Gray sent a message to Twitter."

Third, and very interesting in terms of keeping visitors on the site, you can choose any blog post from your friends, and read it within the Mergelab news feed, just by clicking [more]. When done reading, just click back on the blog headline and it collapses, returning you to the feed. It's still the RSS version from your selected feed, so you can't comment directly to the original site, but it's a good feature, nonetheless. (See the announcement here)

Fourth, you can choose how your feed is displayed, choosing to block Twitters from day one, or even to opt in to showing Google AdSense. But it's a little hard to figure out why one would opt in to Google ads, as they are disabled by default, unless you felt maybe you were doing Mergelab a favor in return for the service.

And fifth, Mergelab separates activity by calendar, putting an interesting real-world delimiter as you scroll through old updates, from "Today" to "Yesterday", "Sunday", etc. No other site I've seen of this nature even knows there is a clock at all aside from relative information (i.e. "11 minutes ago", "2 hours ago", etc.)

While Mergelab is just getting started, open by invitation only, it offers the opportunity to elegantly aggregate friends' updates without the noise of comments, liking and voting common with most social participation sites. It's also easy to add new subscribers from other users' feeds. If they have a friend you find interesting, all you need to do is subscribe to their news with a single click. Over time, as the service opens up, I could see myself adding my friends' friends into my feed, and being as interested in their minute by minute updates as I have been on FriendFeed, only in a quieter way.

Get your own sneak preview or request an invitation at www.mergelab.com.

Guest post written by Arvin Dang, currently writing for The Apple Blog.

We are the generation that lives through media. We don’t watch to pass time, we watch to learn and grow. I’m not sure what this reflects on our education system, but just as literature inspires, media can spark the same creativity and instill similar values.

What can media learn from books?

The inherent value we gain from a book's physicality is amazing. I can buy a book, write in it, store it, trade it, share it, sell it, copy it and burn it. I may not be able to physically hold a movie or a song, but I hope to be able to create the same utility surrounding it.

When comparing digital media and books, I’m not comparing E-books or E-Readers because they face the same DRM issues as most music and videos do. I understand the rules and regulations of copyright placed on books, and I understand the necessity of including plagiarism in context of this.

Now let’s have a look

With a book, I understand the author’s words and right of ownership, but I’m free to quote them and to share their words. I can literally copy every page of a borrowed book without ever paying for it. Will I have RIAA or the Government following my every move? Borrowing a book, if anything, builds reputation. Just as word of mouth is the best form of advertising, sharing someone’s content enables the ability for word to spread. Not only will the author or creator gain readership, they gain reputation. Ultimately, that seems to be far grander than any monetary benefit. Why can’t the same happen with digital media?

Libraries, where books can be borrowed completely free seems completely unconventional right? If video content were offered on a public level similar to libraries, who’s losing out?

Why hasn’t independent content caught on as successfully as the Industry?

I don’t know. You tell me. Is it quality of production? Is it the acting? Or the writing? All I know is media should be based on reputation, not profit. If it helps make you more known, provides meaning, and basic ownership is understood, then why can’t TV follow the same path as books?

I understand the role of money in media. Without monetization, the Entertainment Industry may not be able create the beautiful epics we see. I see the success of independent creators like The Next New Networks proving that the industry doesn’t need to equate profit with content. It makes me very curious to see the actual breakdown; to take a season of The Office and see how much total production costs verse how much is monetized and gained from commercials and sales (DVDs, etc).

It’s a greedy market and a demanding world, but if books can find a balance, can’t media?