In Search of a Better News Aggregator Part 2
This is in continuation of my quest to find a better news or blog aggregator, which aggregates contents from Indian bloggers or news websites. I am yet to find a aggregator, which helps users to keep track of the news without cluttering the feed readers with junk and repetitive posts! In this post we will be looking into the structure of the RSS feeds from the aggregators.
In this post we will look into the format of the RSS feeds of these aggregators. We are analyzing Startups.in, Indimeme, and Avashya. None of these RSS feeds give due credit to the author or blogs. Avashya wants user to navigate first to their site before landing to the source website or blog. Startups and Indimeme give provides link on their title, which takes to the source of the post. These aggregators take a couple of lines from the beginning of the each post and mark them as summary of the post. Most bloggers don’t summarize their thoughts in the beginning of each post. Hence it defeats the purpose of aggregation. Below is the screen shot of the RSS feeds of these aggregators.
Techmeme continues to be my favorite news aggregator. It uses an algorithm to bring the latest discussion and hot topics in the blogosphere. It helps to keep up with the latest happenings. I am yet to see a post from an Indian Blogger which made into the Techmeme list. Lets look at the anatomy of the RSS feed from Techmeme.
This is a professionally designed RSS feed, which gives its credit to the source.
(1) Full title of the post with author and name of the blog/website. This link will directly take you to the Techmeme website, where a user can see the discussion on this topic from other bloggers.
(2) Author’s name and name of the blog or website. This directly takes the user to the home page of the website.
(3) Name of the post and link to the source post.
(4) Brief excerpt of the post which is helpful to the user.
If you notice, the RSS feed does not carry the name Techmeme on their posts. I think it makes sense as none of the posts are written by Techmeme (See the comments below). We need to grow up and stop eating other’s lunch. What is your opinion? Are these aggregators adding value to your reading experience? Leave a comment if you know a better aggregator.
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Comments
“We need to grow up and stop eating other’s lunch.”
our RSS feeds link to original articles but they don’t techmeme rss feeds, is that makes you think like that.
@ Carrying name on the RSS posts- I stand corrected. Ram you are correct. This happens only in All Items View. I have made the necessary changes to the post.
I have positive feedback on Indimeme; pls see my post on May 17th. I think it has the capability to become a good aggregator provided the algorithm is fine tuned.
As a user, I need a aggregator service to bring some order to my reading experience. Unfortunately, thats not happening. I am sure you have plans to improve the service. Thanks for making the cosmetic changes to the feed. Good Luck!
[…] is part 3 of the series which looks for a better news aggregator for Indian Content. Today I have unsubscribed all the news […]
1. Your screenshot shows “from indimeme”, this is not true, this happens only when you see the feed in Google Reader “All Items” view. Even techmeme feed shows techmeme if you view like that. I made a screenshot, check this out if you want proof.
http://indimeme.com/oodami.png
Your post seemed like we are claiming others content as ours which is not trus. Please compare fairly if you are comparing with others.
2. Our RSS feeds link directly to the original articles, i thought that is proper attribution. Any way i changed the feed format, now they will carry blog name as source like this: “Source: Your Blog” with a link to the article.