Making RSS easy
August 6, 2007 – 9:43 pmI’m continually finding myself talking to more executive level employees about ideas generated from the blogosphere (like Doug’s funeral plot lending) and the sources of the ideas. Most of them are now familiar with the the term blog and kinda have a grasp of it, but now we need to make the information easy to consume. Subscribing to RSS feeds is fairly easy to do with the appropriate tools (Google Reader, Outlook 2007, etc) however keeping tabs on all of the sources of information is challenging. Open Source CU has a great blogroll that’s pretty inclusive, but doesn’t catch everything CU related, try as they might.
So what I want to be able to do is provide one, or maybe two, feeds to c-level employees, or anyone else interested, to simplify their consumption of feeds as well as the management. I’ve been looking everywhere for a community-like tool in which a group of people (myself, Trabian, Garland Group, Gene, Ron, etc) would be able to contribute and manage a list of RSS feeds that simply aggregate into one massive feed. That way instead of trying to subscribe to the 50 CU-related feeds or 50 FI-related feeds the new user to RSS could simply pick one or two feeds and have their finger on the pulse of the whole industry.
So to sum it up, I’m first looking to see if there is a tool to aggregate RSS feeds into one simply syndication and if it can be setup to have a group of people manage it…
14 Responses to “Making RSS easy”
I use NetVibes and I seem to recall seeing a widget that would allow you to do what I think you’re trying to do.
Although, I don’t see why a “Credit Union” tab in a NetVibes window that had the feeds of 10-20 sites wouldn’t accomplish what you’re trying to do. I have a tab I call “Banking” that has the feeds from OSCU, Denise, Tinfoiling, etc. as well as non-CU sites like Gonzobanker (your site is there too, btw).
By Ron Shevlin on Aug 7, 2007
I too have begun introducing my peers in Management to the power and simplicity of RSS. But, my thinking is to just give them one or two of the feeds that I find really informative, helpful, and interesting to get them started. Then, let them take it wherever they want to. You know how it is…so many Blogs have links to other good sites, either within a post itself or on something like a Blogroll. I figure I should let their feeds grow organically or die on the vine because if they just start receiving 50 to a 100 posts a day (like they might from the single feed agregator in your example) they will just start tuning out. Just my two cents…
By Kirk on Aug 7, 2007
I couldn’t agree more with the idea of having many feeds in one, easy to access location. In fact, I’ve been working on just that and would love to hear what you think.
If you head over to http://www.banktastic.com/feeds.php, you can take a look at some compiled feeds I created using Yahoo Pipes and a lot of leg work. Now I’m not claiming it’s all encompassing , but I do think it provides options for better aggregation of the data that is out there while trying to avoid the “drinking from the firehose” effect.
I’m interested to here what you and the others here think!
By Mark on Aug 9, 2007
That looks awesome! Besides my articles not showing up right, it looks just about right. With Pipes, can you let other people edit the “blogroll”? I played around with it for a while, but I’m not nearly as
nerdysmart as you.By Robbie Wright on Aug 9, 2007
Robbie,
Sorry about your articles…I’ll see what’s up. I couldn’t find a way to do group editing but that would be a super cool feature.
I’d be interested to hear if you find anything to handle the group aspect. Maybe there’s a way to leverage a wiki structure to push out feeds? (Now I’m just making stuff up!)
Anyways, thanks for the look in and feedback!
By Mark on Aug 9, 2007
Interesting concept and if it could work it would be a great tool. A few points. Some feeds in RSS don’t give you the full feed but the first few lines. Anyone using this tool needs to make sure the full feed is being pushed out. I have been using NetNewsWire for awhile now and like the ability to mange the feeds quickly, i.e. mark all as read, flag, sort by source, sort by date, quickly tagging feeds, etc. Were you thinking of building some of these features into this or just coming up with a one-click aggregate feeder? Kirk’s point about tuning the feed out if there are too many is important because if you can quickly manage the feeds it works, if you can’t you will tune it out.
By Gene Blishen on Aug 9, 2007
@Mark - Nice work! Thanks for including me. One small thing - how can The Bankwatch NOT be in the All Star Feed? You gotta get the word out about this…
By William Azaroff on Aug 9, 2007
Mark, this is a wonderful tool, and we are honored to have CUES Skybox included. If you feel it’s ready for “prime time,” I would love to share it with CUES members, who we are always trying to get more involved in the blogosphere. Robbie, thanks for helping to inspire this!
By Mary Arnold on Aug 10, 2007
Robbie, my Google Reader feed just pointed me to you through William Azaroff. I wonder if The Boardcast could be added to the master RSS feeds for credit unions on Banktastic site? I love this idea and plan on subscribing. Would I be able to use a link to you site on The Boardcast?
By Ginny Brady on Aug 10, 2007
@Gene: I just wanted to clarify what we are trying to offer because there may be some confusion. We are just looking to offer some feeds that do a lot of the legwork of consolidating sources. We are not looking to (at least at this point) build an “FI FeedReader” or anything like that. We think there are plenty of tools out there to read feeds, it’s just the initial feed populating that can get people sometimes.
Starting off, we will be hand selecting the sources that are included, but our eventual goal is to move towards a model where community chooses the feeds.
I definitely agree that full articles are a requirement for the sources and I’ll double check to ensure they are there. We’ve also not included a pretty prominent security blog because they only publish a “teaser” and then actually require a (free) registration to finish the article.
If you were looking at doing something for your organization (or even membership) that included a feed reader, you might want to take a look at Newsgators Personalized Reader product. I don’t think it’s free though…a major set back in my book!
@William: There is a quote I hear on talk radio all the time that goes something like this: “Lists were made to criticized.”
But you’re right about Bankwatch. It’s been added, though it may take 24 hours for the feed to re-populate with it.
@Mary: Go for it!
@Anyone else: If you want to talk to me directly about the feeds, you can shoot me an email at mark at banktastic dot com.
@Robbie: I’m still working on getting your feed working!!! Thanks for starting and facilitating this conversation!
By Mark on Aug 10, 2007
@Ginny: The “CU Feed” was really geared towards blogs that cover the industry a little more broadly than that of an individual CU.
However, I do think a feed of “FIs that Blog” could prove very beneficial, especially for those institutions looking for examples of successful blogging in the wild. It would probably be excluded from the “Master Feed” in order to keep that relevant and managable, but it would still be a great resource.
I’ve got The Boardcast delicious-ed and will include it when the new feed is up and running!
By Mark on Aug 10, 2007
@Mark - Glad I could get the ball rolling! And you had perfect timing!
By Robbie Wright on Aug 10, 2007
Mark, should you need a list of CU blogs for the new feed, check out and click on “PR and Web 2.0″ to the left. (Hope I got this link tag right!)
Looks like I didn’t! Help, Robbie!
By Mary Arnold on Aug 10, 2007