Library clips

If you ever used the now closed Share Your OPML (SYO), which I have posted on a lot in the past, we now have a new service called, Toluu, where we can upload our OPML and compare feeds with others, in order to discover people and feeds.

Other ways for feed recommendation are usually built into the RSS Reader eg. Google Reader, Bloglines, etc. A really good one is FeedEachOther, where, just like Toluu, you visit peoples profiles to check out their feeds, you can also be recommended feeds…others are

Toluu is still in private beta, so I’m sure there’s more to come and most of my feedback will probably be on their to-do list.

I wonder if they are going to be a full social network with private messages and a comment wall.

A Toluu type service for podcasts would be a neat idea as well.

Upload your OPML

Only lets you upload an OPML file not an OPML URL.

You can also upload single feeds, or homepages (and it will find the feed)

It doesn’t matter in this instance, but I wish Google Reader had my OPML in a URL instead of just a file I have to download to my PC then upload to a service like Toluu. Actually I wish I could select tag labels and even feeds to make an OPML on-the-fly.
If my OPML lived at a URL, and Toluu subscribed to this URL, then whatever happens at this URL like deleting/adding feeds, would auto-magically reflect at Toluu.

Toluu has a bookmarklet to let you add feeds later on, and it’s integrated with your RSS Reader…after it adds the feed to Toluu, it then proceeds to your RSS Reader so you can add the feed there, very nifty. This doesn’t apply when deleting a feed from Toluu or Google Reader.

Activity

When you launch a new window toToluu to view your profile, the first page it shows is an activity stream, of you and your contacts…a Facebook News feed type thing

- I got an email telling me that someone added me as a friend (I think this also appears in the activity page)
- I got another email telling me this person who added me as a friend added a new feed to their profile (I think this also appears in the activity page)
- you can also get an email when someone recommends a feed (I think this also appears in the activity page)
- you can turn of these email updates in your account settings, as hopefully the activity page can have all this info
- from my profile page there is no button to go to this activity page

My profile

My feeds - your OPML
Favourite feeds - mark your favourite feeds into a list (they also appear as bold in your main list)
Contacts - you can add friends
Fantastic feeds - popular feeds according to the community

Feed profile

When you click on a feed you can add it to your profile, and also add it to your favourites, and also recommend (select friends and submit)
You can read the latest summaries of the feed as well.

Doesn’t show who subscribes to a feed (this was the best part of SYO), so I’m not sure how I’m meant to discover people
…I can’t find a general people directory either.

I can’t export my OPML as a URL, I’d like Toluu to host my OPML.

Friend Profiles

When I visit a profile I notice that I may have some feeds in common with others, but they are not listed in the “You both read…” list, maybe it’s because some blogs have multiple feeds and we both have a different feed for the same blog.

I can’t export a friends OPML, either as a file or a URL.

When I visit a profile it tells me feeds we have in common (mutual feeds), and unique feeds
- along the top of a profile these are called “Shared”, “Unique”, and this calculates our relationship as a %, called “Match”.

In the body of the profile we see “Feeds you might like…”
- why don’t they just use the term “Unique feeds”, and why would I like these feeds anyway, they are just feeds we don’t have in common.

Next we have “Recently added feeds”.

Next is “You both read…”
- this is the same as “Shared”, again terminology is not consistent, I think “Feeds in common” or “Mutual feeds” is a better label anyway, as I’m not really sharing.

Lastly, “Favourite feeds”…it’s a pity this doesn’t have an OPML either.

Matches

I mentioned before when you visit a profile you can see how close you match, well there is a feature called “Matches“, where it will rank people in the system that have matches with you (obviously ranked with the high matches on top).

Problem I had is that my top match was 96%, this person only has 5 feeds, and we have 3 in common…this top match was not really useful to me. Not sure how this will change once this system scales with lots of users.

Visit me on Toluu here, johnt.

[ADDED 3/04/08: I also noticed that the RSS URL of each feed is not promoted on Toluu, I want to be able to copy-shortcut and whack a feed in my RSS Reader…just found out that now you can to subscribe to a feed in your RSS Reader in one-click…and there is 2 feeds for your activity stream, one for you, and the other for you and your friends]

Related

Feedshow sharing OPML’s
Share Your OPML : social attention
OPML Factory
Dynamic Newsmastering with OPML