Library clips

Spokeo is basically an RSS Reader that is not so generic, it is more focused towards feeds from social networks. You can add any type of feed if you like, but the main focus is you can add URL’s from lots of social networks from within the service, and moreso your RSS Reader is within a social network of its own.

People using this service might not be even aware they are using an RSS Reader, this is where we need to head with RSS.
Lots of RSS Readers now have feed directories to easily add a feed, and like Spokeo, some also allow you to enter a social network user URL or tag URL and the system will find the feed and add it, this way you don’t even have to know what RSS is.

It’s a good idea for the social network addict that doesn’t really know what an RSS Reader is, now they can keep up with their favourite social network tags and users by using Spokeo…you could use an RSS Reader if you want, but it would be a more manual process, plus Spokeo has special features.

The big difference with Spokeo is that it is an RSS Reader within a social network, this is going a step further than a public version of your Bloglines account. I suppose social network newsmastering services like FeedCollectors, Kinja and others are similar, but this is more focused on making topic feed streams, whereas Spokeo is more focused on collecting social network feeds.

The feeds are organised into two default folders, “me”, and “my friends”, then within each folder you can access each subscription.

Not only can you can add tags and users from various services, or feeds in general, but you can also add another Spokeo user as a subscription.

The folder name “my friends” is not the best fitting, it should really be “my subscriptions”, but they are going with “my friends” as it is a heavily used social network terminology.

An interesting feature is that you can limit your river of news by service, eg. just show me a river of news of all my Spokeo user subscriptions, or just show me a river of news of my manual feed subscriptions, or just show me a river of news from my flickr subscriptions (if one of your subscriptions is a Spokeo user then it will also show the Flickr posts within this users account [if they subscribe to any]).

And of course you can click on a single subscription and read that, whether it’s a manual feed, flickr user or tag, Spokeo user, etc…

Not sure if you can limit content from one of your Spokeo user subscriptions, eg. show me a river of news of the Spokeo User “Eric”, then limit the content to just flickr.

Besides limiting a stream from just one service eg. flickr, you can limit a stream by content type, eg. show me posts from my various photo services subscriptions (including if one of my Spokeo user subscriptions includes their own photo subscriptions)…not sure if you can say, show me posts from various photo services from the Spokeo user “eric”.

Lastly you can mix it up and make your own custom limits from your subscriptions, ie. groups, kind of like folder river of news eg. show me a river of news from the flickr tag “beach”, the Spokeo user “eric”, and the RSS feed “Techcrunch”.

You can recommned/rate posts for a chance to appear on the home page, and this will also appear on your Spokeo friends page.

You can also comment on posts, and mark subscriptions as read.