There are a number of exciting European startups in the consumer web space that presented at the Innovate 2006 conference in Spain this week, and I’ll be writing about a number of them.
The first is Athens, Greece based Feeds 2.0, a new RSS reader in private beta that reminds me a lot of Searchfox, the now-defunct personalized news reader acquired by Yahoo earlier this year.
The reader is definitely rough and in need of further development, but the personalization engine is rock solid and will be popular with some users. Feeds 2.0 monitors what you like and dislike about individual posts in your feed list and presents posts to you based on what it thinks you will want to read next. Attention information comes in via what you read (clicking on the title or expand buttons), what you mark as good (similar to Rojo’s Mojo feature) and what you mark as uninteresting. All of your feedback is run through their algorithm, along with feedback on those posts from other users, to help determine what order your posts are shown to you.
The personalization features alone will be enough to convert some users, but I like Feeds 2.0 for other reasons, too. You can view content on a feed by feed (bloglines) basis, or via a river of news view which ranks all content in reverse chronological order (and by personalization if you have that turned on). They auto-generate descriptive tags for each post, helping you find content via a tag cloud for all unread posts. I’d like to see them add the ability for users to social-tag content as well. But the basic result of the tagging/tag cloud feature, along with personalization, is the ability to quickly find interesting content in a sea of new posts.
One other feature that I’d like to see - a three pane view option which many users, myself included, find to be a superior way to view RSS content.
Also, Feeds 2.0 is available in any of five languages - English, Spanish, French, German and Greek. For non-English speaking users, Feeds 2.0 may be one of the few choices available to them in their first language.
Sign up for the private beta on the Feeds 2.0 home page.
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I signed up for the beta; hopefully it will be released for testing soon. From the picture Michael posted, it looks like a clean design.
My issue with the current state of RSS is readers is they are too “geek” centric. Maybe with the introduction of IE7, MyYahoo and other mainstream readers, readers such as Feeds 2.0 and Bloglines feel their only chance to survive is by going after the more tech savvy demographic interested in consuming astronomic amounts of data.
If this is not the case and their intent IS to capture a larger market share, readers need to stick to the river of news view (Michael, I know you prefer folder based, but I am sorry to say you fall under the former demographic), do away with panes and make their relevancy algorithms more transparent.
BUT as I stated, if their intent is to go after content whores (I consider myself one), then yes Feeds 2.0 seems like a step in the right direction.
Nice to see yet another RSS reader/aggregator with few more features. From their FAQ, it seems that the only unique one is the ranking/clustering based on use pattern.
But how do the plan on running the business? acquisition?
Regards,
Startups.in
Even though the migration cost is zilch, i find myself going back to newsgator - many readers have more features, but that one just seems to get the flow right for quick reading, and that’s what matters when you’re a heavy reader.
From a marketing perspective - and perhaps something else - I think that naming a product after a buzzword (I mean the “2.0″, not “Feeds”) is trendy, but kind of lacks of long term vision. I mean, we’re in the business of offering sustainable products and services, not this season’s clothing line. Do I make sense?
For me most Newsreaders get in the way of the CONTENT.
I don’t want a lot of bells and whistles, I want to find out what’s going on, and fast, the easier the better.
I have tried tons of different newsreaders but have abandoned them all and now just use the newsreader function in ProtoPage, since it’s convenient…although there are some features missing from this that I need, such as OPMl export.
I agree with RBA - the name “Feeds 2.0″ is too buzzwordy, and pretty much excludes you from attracting the mainstream demographic. But if the technology is good, maybe it’ll get snapped up regardless.
they have a pretty slick logo
How many RSS readers do we need? One, two, five or ten? Is there a market for these services? BTW, the beta label is so “tired”…The lack of innovation and imagination is a major problem for many web 2.0 startups. “Me-too” products, more of the same features, copycats…What is Feeds 2.0? Yet another web 2.0 company (YAW20C).
I’m not explicitly saying the term applies to this company but it’s not YAW20C. It’s YAWN ALOT (2.0):
Yet Another Web-based Nonsense Application Lacking Objectives and Testing
Have any of these folk tried the product? Yes - it is a bit rough - but then these guys have bootstrapped it and are looking for funding at a point where they have something to show for their efforts. May not meet the ‘instant gratification’ factor applied by some, but it’s the personalisation that hooked me. It’s the sort fo thing that would work for the enterprise.
I want to cut down on the amount I need to read but I don’t want to miss anything that needs attention. This is one way of solving that increasingly intractable problem. to me at least, that’s the point.
Disclosure: I was at the same event as Michael. We didn’t compare notes on this.
“which ranks all content in reverse chronological” thats a good idea
I wonder why people even need RSS readers. For me, Firefox’s live bookmarks is much quicker and easier to get to the info I want (as long as the titles are descriptive enough.)
How is the RSS feed in a ful page any different than going to the site? IE7 has this implemented as well so it makes me wonder the viability of such programs/sites. To each their own I guess.
This past week, I did a podcast with the founder of Feeds 2, Dr. Nicholas Ampazis. You can access the podcast here:
http://www.mrmarkets.com/2006/....._feed.html
I look forward to seeing how Feeds 2 develops over time as a service to get the right information to the right people faster and easier.
Thanks,
Doug