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What Ever Happened to Shared Items?

At the beginning of the year, it looked like Shared Items from Google Reader or other RSS readers were going to become a major force. Products like Linkriver, ReadBurner, RSSMeme and others were innovating quickly. So where are we now?

In his latest column, Steve Gillmor says the following:

Just as Google Reader reached a crescendo of adoption that triggered the freewaring of NewsGator, NetNewsWire, and FeedDemon, Twitter aggregators stole the momentum of shared items and transferred it to the Twittersphere.

I’m not sure I’m ready to buy that just yet. Gillmor clearly has a (unhealthy?) fascination with Twitter, but if he includes FriendFeed as a Twitter aggregator, then I can see where he is going with this.

For a while, it did seem like Shared Items were losing steam, especially as Twitter and FriendFeed gathered momentum in the course of the year.

Indeed, some of the momentum for Shared Items seems to have moved towards FriendFeed. And now, as FriendFeed is slowly moving towards using all of its users gestures to create ‘summaries’ (which are, as I understand it, personalized memetrackers). These days, a lot of discussions in FriendFeed form around Shared Items and they do tend to bring a lot of traffic back to the original blog post as well.

So while we might see the original Shared Item trackers lose steam a bit now, Shared Items themselves will only become more important as they are one of the more important gestures in the FriendFeed ecosystem.

I wouldn't look to Gillmor as a knowledge leader in this space at all. If you've missed it, RSSmeme and ReadBurner continue to innovate. I had a podcast with Drew Olanoff and Adam Ostrow of ReadBurner this evening, which you should check out. http://tinyurl.com/65lwhj

You're probably right about Gillmor – but he did get me to think about this.

Right now, I think the momentum is away from relatively dedicated services like RSSmeme and ReadBurner towards generalists like FriendFeed. While they are still doing interesting things, are they picking up a lot of users and mindshare?

It was a good thought to throw out there, but I wouldn't agree with it either. I never stopped using Shared Items, even when I was a lot more addicted to Twitter.

RSSmeme is growing; we're tracking 13967 Google Reader accounts and grow by a few hundred every day. I don't think things are slowing down.

I think the Shared Items could become really useful if Newsgator & Google worked out their differences and allowed you to sync your clipping folder & google shared items

Confronted with the prospect of being banished from the Shared Items for at least five years, I fought for my rights over several meetings.
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johnsmith

Brisbane Dating