I think Robert is being extremely polite about MyFeedz

MyFeedz Sucks as a Feed Reader

To qualify that, let me show you the "user experience" I went though, and how amazingly let down I felt having given it some of my time.

When I first logged in, this supposedly intelligent RSS Reader presented me with a selection of articles possibly based upon analysis of my own blog.

So I imported the OPML from my Google Reader Account.

After importing this is what I was presented with to read

I think at this time I should point out that none of those articles are from my OPML file, and possibly one is relevant to what I sometimes read, but that is on an article directory rather than a blog.

So I tried refining things a little:-

There are the tags that were defined for me to start with

These are the tags that MyFeedz suggests that I pick from. By selecting a few, and then refreshing the display, slowly a few more tags appear, that might even refer to specific blogs I read every day. Also note that at this time they hadn’t imported all my OPML, just a small cross section.

The front page view didn’t change – the stories being listed in the main panel were not from my selected feeds. That only thing related to my OPML were excerpts in the sidebar. Most of the feeds in my OPML file are full content, so only receiving a small selection and just excerpts wasn’t useful. I wasn’t getting what I wanted to read.

So I left MyFeedz for a while and went to write about something else

A few hour later I received an email from MyFeedz stating that they have processed all my feeds from my OPML. As I am writing this, it is a day later, so in theory they have had plenty of time to work out what I read, and grab the feeds.

First of all here are all the tags I now have selected. It doesn’t cover everything, because as an example I read a lot about WordPress Plugins, and I haven’t been given that option.

Who knows, maybe it will give me a selection of the blogs I want to read.

As far as I am concerned, MyFeedz were successful in creating a…

Total Disaster

Here is my new front page

Only one of the blogs on my front page is in my OPML file, and the article listed is 3 days old.

You can however get a little more personalized if you go tag exploring.

Tag Exploring

With tags you can select only your subscribed feeds, and sort by both date and relevance.

Browsing your tags is extremely slow – I am not talking unresponsive or a little laggy – I am talking click a tag and then switch tabs to do something else for a while – infuriatingly slow.

It is actually so unresponsive that it is preventing me doing a complete review.

A tag view lists posts that in some way were tagged or related to that term, so maybe a domain name. Occasionally it also offers some meme like features (think Techmeme or Megite) with links to related posts.

Tag searching seems to have just ground to a halt, so no screenshot will be forthcoming.

I currently can’t see a use for MyFeedz – it isn’t a Feed Reader – no river of news, no way to mark what you have read, no way to read a specific blog, and no way that I can see to look at the history.

It can’t compete with a meme tracker especially for speed to find out the hot discussions in a particular niche. If you want a meme of your own OPML, take Megite for a spin.

As for specific keywords or tags, you are far better off using Technorati or Google Blogsearch.

Sharing

Robert mentioned sharing in his writeup – there is a way to share with MyFeedz. There are RSS feeds for each tag, and while you are reading you can add a tag to something, so you could use personal tags as thus create a shared feed of your selections.

The problem is I am not sure you would want to share something you haven’t read, thus you will end up having to click through to every site before you share something extremely frustrating.

For Niche Marketing

It is another source for creating tag based RSS feeds that you can feed to content sites on autopilot, thus I am sure many people will find a use for it

*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

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MyFeedz is not a search engine, bookmarking service, or RSS reader, though it can be used as each of them according to Adobe. It uses artificial intelligence to find the most linked-to and referenced news items based on one’s interests.

Adobe said on the site that myFeedz tracks some 45,000 feeds and 157,000 tags across almost 600,000 articles. Logged-in users can update the tags that interest them or add feeds to a profile. Clicking on a tag takes the reader to articles that match; myFeedz can also keep track of tags to ignore.

The site can be further personalized through its options. Article filters can limit feeds checked to those the person has in a profile. A sidebar shows connections of tags related to the one being used as the current source for articles; also, articles appearing in a feed that don’t fit in can be easily marked ‘off-topic.’

MyFeedz is not a one-way street. The user can turn around and publish a feed of articles from myFeedz as a RSS feed on another site. This allows visitors to a blog to see what the author is reading too. On the search side, myFeedz allows the user to make a query and then save that to the profile.

Currently, Adobe is collecting feedback about myFeedz during this preview phase. Adobe said neither the quality nor the features in place today are complete, and they wish to find out from other users what they want in the service.

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I briefly checked out the Adobe Reader. It’s missing three things that I find addictive about Google’s Reader: well-thought-out keyboard commands, “read-all-feed-items-at-once in a ‘River of News’” and ability to share feed items with others. If your feed reader has those three things, then I want to hear about it and try it out and see how it compares with Google’s Reader.

By the way, I’m using Google Reader right now to build my link blog. If you haven’t checked out my link blog, I think you’ll find it unique. I go through 541 feeds. In the last month I’ve read 21,991 items and shared 1,169 items. You’ll find that it’s totally different from Digg (cause the only one voting here is me, so you get to see what interested me in the feeds) and TechMeme (which only shows you the most popular stuff — I pick technology items. Really I’m doing this for programmers like Chris Messina and Dori Smith, and busy executives, like my boss who don’t have time to dig through thousands of items trying to find what’s good to read).

How do I do my link blog? I set Google Reader to automatically open in the “All Items” view. That’s the “River of News” view. Then I use the keyboard commands to go through my feed items one-by-one. “J” key goes forward. “K” key goes back. “Shift-S” shares an item.

I wish there were a directory of other people’s Link Blogs. Anyone want to start one on a Wiki?

UPDATE: ironically enough, today Google’s servers are misbehaving and aren’t accepting my shared items. Will try again later.

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About the Author

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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