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July 20, 2007
Aggregate the Aggregators- Bring the edges to you
Aggregate the Aggregators- Bring the edges to you
A post on Scbleizer today frames a similar thought I had about Google reader, he uses Facebook as his example:
“Facebook: the new data black hole — Oh, my. — I added the Wordpress Facebook Application a few days ago. Now my blog, and your comments, are showing up on my Facebook Profile Page. Along with my Twitters. My Flickr photos. My Google Reader items. My Kyte videos. And a bunch of other things.”
(http://scobleizer.com/2007/07/19/facebook-the-new-data-black-hole/)
Facebook is a meta application host network a web OS on top of everything else. It now hosts my Google Reader feed which is already a data mashup of various feeds.
I migrated over hundreds of daily bookmarks into Google Reader. Now instead of having to go through every morning and open links in different tabs and then scan each site individually looking over various news and blogs, this entire experience is now all contained and consolidated in the Google Reader experience. Before when I opened more than 20 sites at once the upstream data would cave by Verizon DSL session. Verizon must have put bandwidth filters in place to avoid customers always maxing out their data usage.
My migration to Google Reader was instigated by constantly reading about the efficiencies of the reader as well as hearing how much others who consume as much intel as myself enjoyed it.
At any rate, after spending a week consuming information through Google Reader I realized how much less time I spent combing for information around the edges and how much easier it has become to find information through the reader. The same thing applies with Facebook, after embedding and adopting key applications I no longer need to out to the edges and bring it to me, as it’s already there just one click away.
This is actually quite similar to the migration from appointment based television to on demand consumption brought on by the rise of DVRs. The implications for both are enormous.
Just a few things to consider are:
How will this play out with metrics with new measurement based on time spent vs. page views?
Will RSS pulls be viewed as page views or time spent?
Also, what implications will this have in terms of less random discovery of news and information?
I initially want to call readers in general disruptive but they actually have more of disintermediation effect than a complete distruction effect on the media consumption experience. Especially as a user, reader and consumer of media and information I love the overall efficiencies of mashup feeds. Some of my feeds are mashups of over 100 RSS feeds funneled into one feed, which is then put into Google Reader and embedded into Facebook.
Parsing information this way has been a real game changer from a GTD time perspective. The economies of this new world order are impressive.
So the winning proposition is aggregating the aggregators and delivering it in the most edible fashion.
Same as it ever was.
Posted by mark at July 20, 2007 10:29 AM