alarm:clock

Search - Wednesday, January 26, 2005

RSS Aggregators + Community

The venture-backed RSS reader/social networking startup Rojo Networks got ink today from Technology Review and Slashdot. The focus is on whether RSS and community are natural bed-buddies - common sense is that all content has a natural community tie-in. On Slashdot, some focused on Rojo's imitation of Google Gmail and Orkut's viral campaign to build buzz by only allowing users by invitation. In Rojo's case this policy seems smart because their server crashed when Slashdot linked to them.

There are a whole lot of entrants in this space and we believe that there isn't room for that many. The problem is that even on a shoestring these are applications and they require some significant investment. Blogs can live fine on middling traffic, but RSS aggregators, especially venture-backed ones cannot. And time is running out to innovate as MyYahoo is innovating with RSS at a good clip. At this point, a couple of sites, particularly Bloglines are making a go of it, but Rojo, Kinja, and Eurekster are well behind.

Read - So What Are You Reading These Days? (Technology Review)
Read - Filtering RSS Through Your Social Web (SlashDot)