The Read Write Web blog has an interesting post this week on a very innovative new web app called ReadBurner. ReadBurner displays the hottest URLs at any given time according to the Google Reader "shared items" feeds users have submitted for tracking.
I feel like knocking myself in the head for not thinking about it first, kudos to the app's author.
It's an example of taking what Google gives us an making something more valuable from it, I'll be watching what the next steps are for the app. Check out Read Write Web - ReadBurner and the Future of Leveraged User Data:
ReadBurner is a great example of one of the cool things you can do with feeds. Here's some next steps I'd love to see from the app.Sphere: Related ContentRecommended users. Let me sign up for an account with ReadBurner (using or tied to OpenID please) and recommend other users' feeds to me that have a lot of overlap with mine. Something like the recommendations at ShareYourOPML (site down) but dynamic so people will keep using it. I'd love to get a feed of newly recommended users too, and perhaps the ability to add recommended users' feeds to a spliced feed just for me.
Hot users. I'm guessing that ReadBurner could show me a LeaderBoard of the contributors who most often share items early that end up being hot later. I would subscribe to those peoples' feeds in a heartbeat. The site has some interesting stats now, specifically the most shared-from sources and authors, but a lot more is possible I'm sure.
It's exciting to think about. This is the kind of innovation that gets the mind spinning. I hope ReadBurner will continue developing, will see continued adoption and won't be shut down by Google. Goodness knows someone outside has to keep the pressure to innovate on Google Reader - remember how long it took GReader to add a search box? Google Reader is very good, but so much more can be done.
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