Content Matters

To help make RSS feeds more interactive, Feedburner has launched a new capability called FeedFlare.  Their announcement is here.  FeedFlare automatically inserts up to seven metadata elements as a footer at the end of each post, enabling users to more easily tag the content with del.icio.us, email the post to another user, email the post’s author, or to see links and comments for that post.

While the initial launch is focused on blog posts, Feedburner announced plans to provide tools which would allow publishers to automatically add the FeedFlare metadata to all documents being published.  In essence, Feedburner will provide publishers with a simple to use plugin to generate useful metadata.  Feedburner also intends to provide an open API to enable publishers to add new web services. 

So, what’s the benefit of FeedFlare?

First, it enables bloggers and publishers to retain some of their “identity” when their feeds are syndicated.  Sure, if you’re reading this at www.ContentMatters.info, then you can already or tag the post on del.icio.us, etc.  However, if you’re reading this in an RSS reader, or if it’s been syndicated to another site, you can still email me and I will be sure that it comes to me, not the owner of the other site.

Once the API is released, the benefits become more clear.  Publishers will be able to modify the metadata created – for example, to post to a del.icio.us competitor, to provided various language versions of the metadata or to create contextual advertising links.

In the coming months, as RSS feeds become part of the mainstream web environment, tools like FeedFlare will be needed to make RSS an interactive environment, rather than a simple feed of text.

Initial comments on FeedFlare are provided by Richard McManus, Fred Wilson and TechCrunch.