Regator, the blog aggregator that acts like a mix between a standard RSS reader and Digg, has launched in public beta.
We initially covered Regator in July when the site launched in a limited private beta. At the time my biggest concern was the inability to add your own RSS feeds to the site, which restricted you to the approximately 3,000 blogs handpicked by Regator. CEO Scott Lockhart says that the site has been updated to allow users to upload their own feeds, but these won’t be visible to other users until they have been approved by Regator’s editors.
The site has also expanded on its sharing functionality to include Twitter and Facebook, with plans to introduce further integration with social networking sites in the future. There are a number of similar sites that combine news aggregation with social voting, including Socialmedian, which we covered last week.
Thanks for the coverage… I would say that of the many differences between Regator and Socialmedian is that we are looking to target mainstream users who aren’t really that familiar with RSS or even blogs. We are planning on releasing a bunch of new stuff very soon that makes it even easier for people to find great new content, no matter if they are an early adopter or an early adopter’s mum. Cheers!
From Monday your going to have some healthy competition on your hands
Watch this space.
Hi Chris, I’m Scott on of the co-founders of Regator. Cool. I look forward to taking a look. Cheers!
Hi, another Feed reader with semantic features is Feedzz. (Featured in crunchbase)
It allow user to submit their own OPML files and subscribe to the most populars by category.
Now it has been release a new version integrated with Twitter, IM services , RSS Syndication and embedables widgets
The semantic concept is splitted now in subcategories as People, politics.
Cheers
Regator is pretty nice to use and navigate. The only thing that seems a pain is how far I need to scroll down (as long as TC’s main page). At least when you hit the ‘next’ button, it takes you to the top of the next page. I would prefer zero scrolling, with the next page loading in the background.
Also, I have to mouse over a headline to see what the source is, which is a bit annoying as well. Some blogs are just not worth it, as they regurgitate stories like crazy.
Thanks for the feedback! Couple of things… you can choose how long the page length will be in your preferences once you log in. As far as the source blogs go they are directly beneath the post title on every post anywhere on the site. You’re right some blogs are just not worth it, and do just say the same old thing, we try our best to ensure quality control that by having our editors review each blog that brought onto the site. Hope this answers your questions/observations! Thanks for the feedback! Cheers
Thanks for the clarification. Good to know. I might rethink forcing a login in order for a new user to understand the full benefits of your site. So many logins these days…
Sure, I agree… we have tried to keep as much functionality outside of any required login as possible and we have made the login/registration process as easy/short as possible, e.g. email address is optional. At the end of the day, that is always a challenge for any site.
We have a video tour which is getting a ton of hits today as well which should help people understand the site better if they don’t want to sign up. Even casual users should be able to navigate the site and find links to great posts without having to log in. THanks for the feedback! We’ll be definitely keeping this in mind as we continue development on the site.
Cheers!
Are they having technical issues right now?
Not that I know of… everything on our end is looking good despite the TechCrunch and Mashable traffic. what are you seeing?
Cheers, Scott (co-founder, Regator)
“There are a number of similar sites that combine news aggregation with social voting, including Socialmedian”
..add another one to the list
http://www.bloggerunited.com
rei – I would agree with you that there are similar sites that are aggregating RSS, but we are going for a different target market than most and we also only focused on hand-picked blogs not newsfeeds in our database which is a big difference from just about every other aggregator out there.. I will check out bloggerunited. thanks for the feedback!
another news aggregator
give me a break
seriously, right? but we are doing things differently (isn’t everyone, i know)… but we are targeting a non-geek audience where most people don’t even know what a blog is let alone Techmeme or Socialmedian. Also we aren’t really a news aggregator in the truest sense, we’re a blog aggregator… subtle difference, yes. But a fairly major one at the end of the day. We don’t have newsfeeds on our site, which pretty much every other site is primarily made up of. By doing this we get a more interesting and diverse collection of posts that aren’t all regurgitating the a few AP/Reuters articles. I hope you check out the site. Cheers! Scott – co-founder, Regator
I consider myself a non-geek who happens to like web 2.0 so I’m probably in your target audience. I -really- like the design of regator and I love the variety in channels (compared to sites like digg which have “tech,” “sports,” “electronics,” “comics”). I also think the breakdown between channels/fav blogs/fav channels is smart and well implemented.
I do think it would be really nice if the “my regator” tab was more like a traditional news reader. Right now it would be difficult to keep up on blogs because I wouldn’t know which blogs have new posts, for example. Some of the features like “kinda related” and “unviewed posts” don’t seem to be working very well.
The dealbreaker for me is not being able to add my own blogs. Even the most non-techy blog reader has friends’ blogs or obscure blogs that would never be added to your directory. I don’t see why we couldn’t add these to our “favorite blogs.” Maybe you can flag these blogs for editorial review if X people add them to their favs. I don’t think the barrier for RSS feeds becoming mainstream is that there are too many blogs; I think it’s because it takes a lot of time/energy/learning/knowledge to set up an RSS reader. I think handling that problem is what regator excels at right now, which seems like the hardest part.
I really like the site, though, and will subscribe to your blog on google reader for now.
If you added something like a google reader-lite to “my favorites” using your better/friendlier design, I would -definitely- switch.
Jrrrl!! Thanks for the feedback!
I am very happy to tell you that if you log in you can import your OPML file from another reader or import individual blogs as well. And they all go into review for addition to the main Regator directory. So, we have exactly what you are looking for right now! You can go to our FAQ or watch our video tour to get more info on what we have in Regator! Cheers!
Hi Scott, thanks for the response. I know the blogs I added from my OPML file were added for review, but I know many (or most) of my feeds won’t be accepted to the directory, and shouldn’t be because they are very minor or custom feeds.
My “want” is that we can use regator to read any blog, whether it is in the directory or not. I don’t think many people will want to use Regator to read some blogs, and Google Reader or something else for other blogs!
jrrrl- you can read and organize any blog in your regator reader, even if they don’t make it into our main directory. They will appear in your personal MyRegator only. Once you import your OPML or add them individually, they will show up in your favorite blogs (left column) and will be grey in color as opposed to blue. You will be able to click on the blog name and see all the posts from that blog and they will mix in with your favorite blogs that are in Regator when you are viewing all.
We agree with you that without that it would really limit the site as opposed to adding a nice complement to our hand-picked collection as it does.
We really want to make sure that you are satisfied with your regator experience, so if you want to get a walk through of how it works we would more than happy to help – you can get us on AIM aussiescott75 or email – scott =at= regator -dot- com
“read more summary” is kind of a silly option and placement is confusing. It is natural to have read full article linked in that spot. Also it is sometimes pointless and just allows to view 5 more words.
Yeah, we could probably make that a little more intuitive especially when there isn’t that much after the link. That was a big request from our private beta users to have in each post. We’ll see what we can do. Thanks for the feedback! Cheers – Scott
Didn’t Rojo.com already try something like this already?
kind of, but from looking at their site today, not really much at all. we are quite different in a lot of ways. I have to admit that rojo was before my time in RSS and I wasn’t really aware of it at all until today. I know… bad, huh.
Hi Scott,
Nice to see a founder getting involved on blogs. That`s the way to do it.
Wanted to let you know I wrote a post in Hebrew about Regator on my blog:
http://www.kerenruck.com/
For the Israeli audience to have stuff to read.
Best of luck.
Ha ha I found it! Excellent! Hebrew!!! Yes!!!
Cheers mate!
What happened to their cute Alligator mascot?
Now it seems like they just want to sell us swampland.
Hi Joe. Reg, our cute gator, is standing at the top of the page next to the logo, where he’s always been …and peeking from behind the welcome box. He’s not gone. He’s a vital member of the team. He’s here to stay for sure. Our official logo has neither the swamp background nor the gator, just the text. Not sure why they chose just to use the cattails in this post.
Yeah toober.com is cool. I have 33,439 points and I’m saving up for a vacation!! I use their live video chat. It’s easier than Skype
http://www.enewss.com is blog aggregator service for indian blogs.
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http://www.naz.net