July 20th, 2007
Im in ur Facebook app, slurpin' up ur feedz
There’s much to love about Facebook, but the thing I’m most hooked on at the moment is seeing what you’re reading.
I know what you’re reading, that is, if you’re sharing items using Google Reader, you’ve added the Google Reader Shared Items Facebook application (and pointed it at your Shared Items), and we’re friends or have joined the same group at some point. If so, chances are I’ve subscribed to your Shared Items in Google Reader. That’s 25 of you so far, along with 69 other feeds. It’s no Scoble-sized subscription list, but it’s still a youngster, just a few days old.
The 25 “Shared Items” feeds on my subscription list are by far the most intriguing. They represent 25 intelligent and eclectic people regularly combing through their individual collections of probably 100+ feeds, and flagging what fascinates them most. When their “Shared Items” enter Mario Romero’s Facebook application, what pulses out the other end is the steady flow of what’s influencing the influencers.
Though you might fear the hive mind would congregate around the same handful of queen bees, there’s very little overlap in what this group of people decide to “share.” 2-4 stories a day at most is all I’m seeing.
Robert Scoble called this a Digg killer, particularly when it comes to the Facebook application’s “top stories” component. But when people’s shared items become part of your steady information diet, it’s like layering intelligence on top of Digg and everything else, like turning loose a scarcely-joined group whose unthinkingly collective job is to dampen noise and boost both signal and serendipity. Mihai Parparita at Google says the marriage of Reader and Facebook “shows how open platforms (Reader’s and Facebook’s) can be used together without needing permission from either party.” In the end though, it’s the individual users giving their permission — by sharing Reader items, participating in the Facebook ecosystem of friends and groups, and adding the Shared Items Facebook app — that take it to the next level. At that point it becomes Techmeme with a thrumming, Mark of Gideon heartbeat, and more fine-grained measures of importance than popularity.
[Update:] More on this from Josh Young: “I want to use this facebook app to actively subscribe to many individual’s shared items feeds. That’s because, in the end, there’s really only one important feature the app needs: aggregation how I want to aggregate.”
Denise Howell is an appellate, intellectual property and technology lawyer who enjoys broad industry recognition for her expertise on the intersection of emerging technologies and law. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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