I have discovered a few cool new web sites that make great use of syndicated feeds. Most of these sites aren’t about RSS, but they all utilize it in new ways. They also all have social/sharing aspects that form their own communities. To me this is some of the best of what the web can do right now. It’s very exciting (yes, I know I’m a geek).
- 43 Things
This site lists and aggregates people’s goals. Want to drive across the USA? So do 66 other people, and 60 people already did it and will tell you if it’s worthwhile. - Woot
This website sells one thing each day, no more no less. Subscribe to their feed and you can check out the item without having to go to their site. Each item sold also has a forum where users can discuss the product. - Ta-da lists
This is a simple to-do list system, but you can share lists publicly and publish a feed of your list items.
And my old favorites (most of which I discussed on 3 URLs on AudioActivism.org last October):
- flickr
Post photos, tag (categorize) them, make slideshows, surf other people’s tags, comment on their photos, etc. - del.icio.us
This is a web-based system to store your bookmarks. This is especially great for people who work from different computers all the time. You can tag your bookmarks, and see what other people are bookmarking. Subscribe to a del.icio.us tag by RSS and see everything people post on that tag. Some folks are making an effort to collect nonprofit technology resources by collectively using the tag “nptech.” - Bloglines, duh!
This is what I use to subscribe to all of the afore-mentioned RSS feeds! Not only is it free and easy to use, they even have a mobile version which works nicely on my Treo. It’s also social in that you can see who else subscribes to feeds you like and then see what else they are reading.