FeedEachOther: A Social RSS Reader
With so much news and information out there, we all could use a little help to make it more accessible, but what if we want to share what we find? FeedEachOther is an application with this in mind; get the news you care about and provide a way to share information without pestering your friends with emails.
Getting started with FeedEachOther is made simpler with a startup guide, but let’s go through it.
FeedEachOther starts with a front page full of suggestions and top stories, but we’ll start with the settings, which are linked on the navigation bar under the banner. Some of the settings have already been filled out from the sign-in process, so let’s skip those tabs. The next tab we notice is the MyProfile tab where you can put in (or not) whatever details you would like to share with the FeedEachOther community. Depending on how social and open you are feeling you can include your relationship status and put in a picture.
The next tab under Settings is called My Feeds, and we can sort our feeds (name, popularity, view count, and frequency) and set folders for our feeds. From this same tab we can unsubscribe, set our feeds to public so we can share them, or private. There is a tab for settings for email alerts when someone adds you to their network or when you are sent a message, and a tab with links to share your shared items with either FriendFeed or Facebook. General settings for how links are opened or what theme FeedEachOther is in are in the last tab.
Now that we’re set up, let’s find some feeds. At any time we can search for feeds with the search field in the banner of the page, or hit the Discover button which will bring up a page of clickable keywords to take us into new topics. If you click the Share button a page opens with the newest and most popular users. If you click on any of the user photos (this applies to any user link) you can see any of their public feeds, which is a fun way to see what other people are looking at. Any time you see a feed you like, just click it and click the Subscribe button and it’s on your list.
If we click on the our user name in the navigation bar FeedEachOther will show us the latest activity we’ve performed, and show our subscriptions. Clicking on the Dashboard link (next to our username) will show us feeds as the posts - from our network, friends, or family depending on settings - come in, chronologically. To see our feeds, the easiest way is to use the navigation box at top left which has the tabs, My Feeds and My Stuff. My Stuff will give you quick access to every area of FeedEachOther including clips you’ve saved. My Feeds will give you a list of your feeds. Click on one to show your feeds, which will open in the large panel on the right. All posts in the feed end with the option to clip the post for later, archive to save indefinitely, tag so you and others can search for it, or share it, which will send it out to all of your fans. You can also add a note at the bottom for your friends, or use the Discussion link to start a discussion about the post. At the bottom of the page are links to help navigate the posts, and while posts are open there will be Related Feeds suggested on the left panel.
FeedEachOther is a capable application that adds a social component to RSS feeds, which may be a turn off for some users. For users that are not looking to be social and want to manage their feeds, FeedEachOther’s social tools will most likely be distractions. On the other hand, the suggestions that come from FeedEachOther’s social networking and tagging are a great way to find new feeds. Additional tools for FeedEachOther include adding in other feed lists with an OPML import (either link or file), or exporting via OPML link. There are also buttons that you can add to your browser for quick feed subscription and dashboard widgets are available for iGoogle and NetVibes.
To find FeedEachOther or other RSS readers, there is the Listio search: RSS+manage.
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Tags: feeds, manage, network, organize, read, rss, share, social
Posted in: RSS Reader | Respond
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