There is a lot of "news" overlap among tech-centered sites. For example, I subscribe to the Google Blogoscoped feed and so was already well aware of Philipp's post on Google's goals and directions well before Slashdot got ahold of it [1]. Another common occurence is for John Battelle to post something that BoingBoing picks up, and vice versa [2] (he is their band manager, so it's to be expected.)
Google already has the ability to detect and group similar content. They do this very well for Google News. The idea, then, in order to reduce the amount of work on Google's side, is to create a clone of the Google News algorithm and feed it every rss feed that Google Reader polls (or better yet, every rss feed on The Internets...). Then group the topics in my feedreader according to some customizable options. If I don't have to read the same news items twice, I can digest more news. This is more money for Google because many of the rss feeds I subscribe to include their advertisements!
This is also a nice feature in general, because Google would be grouping backwards in time with articles you have already read. Thus, similar to Slashdot's recent addition of the ability to tag an article as similar to a previous one, you can follow a story over time without having to tag it. Must have feature!
[1] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/27/1128258
[2] http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/07/searchblogs_battelle.html |
Then they could also recommend other messages from feeds that you are not subscribed to if you want to read more about a topic. |
Another way to help people digest all the news out there would be a modification to the RSS/ATOM specifications. An attribute near the top that allowed you to list the rss feeds that you are subscribed to. Kottke.org has a list of "Sites I've enjoyed lately." If you trust Kottke's ability to filter out cool stuff, then he could list the feeds he reads in his feed, and you wouldn't have to read those sites yourself. This in many ways could obviate the need for Digg etc... You get to pick the hierarchy of human filters you prefer most. |
Whens this being released into Google Reader?
I need it........ like now! |
