WebProNews

There's a new web-based RSS reader in town. It's called inform. What differentiates inform from others is that you can easily dig deeper into any news story by drilling into its relevant topics, people, places, industries and organizations.

Topix.net already does this for news, but this is the first time I have seen this applied inside an RSS reader.

>>> Inform.com

The bigger question is how many web-based aggregators will the market support? There are already dozens of them. I am beginning to think that eventually Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft will rule the day because they make RSS seamless. (By the way, I think Start.com will one day replace My MSN - it should.) Right now Bloglines is on top, but OPML (definition) makes it easy for me to take my feeds anywhere. There's no lock-in. I still can't take my Amazon purchase history or my Google search history elsewhere. Yet with RSS the users have been successful in insisting that their feeds be portable. That puts many of them at risk.

(UPDATE: Rafat Ali says inform is really trying to be a clunky news aggregation site, not an RSS reader. I think it's trying to replicate what RSS does, but without it.)

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.