Library clips

The other week I posted on searching your social filter, and your blog network as your social filter, one of the main players in this field is Lijit, where you can search across your lifestream and Reading List. You can also add others Lijit users to your search filter, so you are searching across the filter of you and someone else, or you could just choose to visit that other users profile and search their Lijit.

Anyway the purpose was that social filtering is a way to deal with the enormity of the web, and achieve some quality by searching people you trust as a filter. These people you trust have interests similar to yours, people you admire, people that are experts in a field, so searching across these people you know is a perfect filter. If you are researching a new interest, you may search an expert locator/lifestream service like Lijit or Ziki and find someone’s profile and search their filter.

Social filter can work in other ways other than search, we can share our RSS Reader subscriptions on the sidebar of our blogs by using a Grazr widget, or join a RSS Reader social network like FeedEachOther or Streamy and browse someones profile, read their feed subscriptions and share links…or share your OPML at an exchange type service like SYO.

BlogRovr

Another way to use a social filter is BlogRovr, which I briefly mentioned a little while back.
This totally unique tool built on a simple idea has become an instant addition to my regular web 2.0 daily experience.

How it works?

Upload a bunch of feeds by importing your OPML Reading List.

From now on when you browse the web, if any of the subscriptions in your Reading List have, in one of their blog posts, linked to the webpage you are currently on, you will be able to read these blog posts.

How cool is that…surf to anypage on the web, and pleasantly be told if people you trust have talked about this site in the past.

If there is breaking news about an article or a new website, instead of searching your RSS Reader to see who has posted about it, just surf to the webpage everyone is talking about, and BlogRovr will tell and show who in your OPML has posted about it.

Now I’m coming to the purpose of this post…what if I want to see who else other than people in my OPML is talking about the newest hot website.

I guess I could consult a memetracker like TechMeme or megite.

NOTE: Megite also allows you to personalise a memetracker to your OPML.

Back to it…

What if at the BlogRovr website I could add friends, not really a social network, but just making a favourites list.

When I am reading a webpage, I could ask BlogRovr to show me content through someone else’s eyes.

eg. I’m reading a webpage about the latest web 2.0 product

- BlogRovr tells me who in my OPML has already posted about this product

- I can ask BlogRovr, who else has posted about this product according to friends A’s OPML,

- and I wonder if there are any posts from friends B’s OPML, and so on

- and maybe saying, show me posts about this webpage from all my BlogRovr friends, or just a group of my BlogRovr friends

This way I can surf the web and get reviews not just throught my immediate social filter, but the social filters of my friends.

What about mashing up BlogRovr and Techmeme…Adam Green already has a mashup where he can make a dynamic OPML of the sources that have a current post on TechMeme.

If I was looking at a webpage, I could ask BlogRovr, tell me if any of the sources that have a current post on TechMeme have posted about this page I’m viewing.

Same goes with the TechMeme Leaderboard, a Top 100 list of TechMeme sources.

When I’m on a webpage I could ask BlogRovr, tell me who has posted about this webpage from people in the TechMeme Leaderboard.

What about topics, I could ask BlogRovr, who in the Technorati blog topic “wiki” has posted about this webpage I’m on.

Any thoughts?

[ADDED: If you include your own blog feed into BlogRovr…you can find out which of all your blog posts have linked to one of your blog posts]

[ADDED: BlogRovr is a feature of a bigger product called Stickis…annotate the page you are on, and see other stickis people who have already annotated the page you are on…see more. Basically a sticky note blog social network.]

[ADDED: While we are there why not include some type of live impressions of a webpage, by being able to chat with others on the same page…a la Gabbly, Others Online, etc… NOTE: medi.um is more than this as you can click on a friends profile to see where there at, and join them at that webpage and chat, and then browse to other webpages together.]

[ADDED 11/11/07: Blogbar : search your outlink sources]