I’ve been thinking lately a lot about my RSS Feed.  I want it to be in constant flux, steadily changing, showing me new blogs, new ideas, new subjects.

I actually wrote about the RSS Curse a while ago, explaining how we get used and accustomed to our Feed; how we are not welcoming change to our established subscriptions. My suggestion back then, was to delete all subscriptions and start looking for some new ones.

Barry Welford suggested checking the sites submitted by like-minded people in StumbleUpon and Justin Kirstner dropped the idea of implementing and using Yahoo Pipes with the RSS Feed. Great ideas both, but they are time-consuming efforts; that was also one of the problems of deleting the whole feed.

Apart from that, I agree with the opinion, that deleting all your feeds is a harsh measure – maybe necessary, but harsh. So, I started looking for new ways to expand my feed and discover new blogs.

Share your RSS subscriptions

I noticed, that most RSS aggregators have this great function called Export. All you have to do is press Export and the aggregator makes an *.opml list of all your subscriptions. This list can be read by any aggregator.

So, instead of searching new blogs and entries all by yourself, clicking submissions in SU and wondering through Mixx, you can just read the RSS Feed of your friends. This is certainly something missing from the social web; we can follow our friends in almost every social network, but it would be great to follow their subscriptions in their RSS Aggregator. (am I missing something, is there such a network?)

Until such a network comes along, I’m still interested in sharing my subscriptions. So you can download my *.opml list and simply import it in your feed.

I’ve thought about the best way to use this import/export trick:

• You export your own feed and save it in a Folder,
• In this Folder you don’t have only your feed, but also the ones of your friends
• with the import/export function you can change feeds, whenever you feel like it, without actually losing your own.

 How to share

I’ve been trying to find the simplest and fastest way for us to share our feeds.

1. One thought was to put an upload button under this post and everyone could simply upload the file. I don’t know how to do that, so if anyone has an idea, speak up!
2. You send me your *.opml file, I upload it and make a list of all the feeds, of course with a link back to your blog.
3. We start a meme, you write a post in your blog and share your *.opml file there. I then put a link at the bottom of this post, pointing at your article.

I think, that’s a great way of discovering new things; having a constantly growing list of the feeds of your friends, people you trust and have the same interests. Much easier than deleting all your subscriptions and of course much more fun.

It is also interesting to see, how many blogs overlap between these feeds. Are we all reading the same stuff?

Go Share

Go

• write a post in your blog posting your *.opml file or
• send me your *.opml file and I’ll upload it here with a link to your blog   or
• tell me how to put a damn upload button here!!

Let’s share our subscription lists, I’m really interested in reading new blogs. Aren’t you?

Download my feed list.

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