Adobe launches myFeedz, the social newspaper

February 17, 2007

By sinha

Adobe, in its effort to explore the web2.0 space has launched myFeedz [what a cheesy web2.0 name!]

So what is myFeedz??
Well, to understand what is myFeedz, it’s important to understand what myFeedz is not::

It is not a feed reader.
It is not a bookmarking service.

So what is myFeedz?
Its a web app which basically reads RSS feeds, filters the noisy ones out, and present to you, the most relevant feed/news that you should read.

And how does it work?
myFeedz uses artificial intelligence techniques to show you personalized news about topics you are interested in.
Some of the ingredients used to determine an article’s importance are its publishing source, tags, popularity, overall rating, click-throughs, language and more. Your profile (tags, feeds and reading history) is also taken into account to determine how important an article is for you.

And how is it different from any RSS/feed reader?
Well, feed reader simply shows you the posts from your subscribed feeds. myFeedz will *attempt to* show you the most relevant feed/news.
Basically, an attempt to be a “pagerank” of feed world?

My take:
Any product which aims to guesstimate what I should read is not highly welcome.

At the end of the day, my life and feeds revolve beyond the well known bloggers/news sites; and I have subscribed to interesting feeds [which unfortunately aren't that popular], and any AI/automated product will tend to filter out such feeds.

And isn’t web2.0 all about community based news [Digg?], and not about Mr. PC telling me what I should read!!
Am I missing something?

I will anyway give myFeedz a try and see how it fares w.r.t my requirements [i.e. interesting news/views and not necessarily from top bloggers/sites].
Any takers?

Filed under: myFeedz

Tags: Adobe

| More

Ritesh Banglani on February 18, 2007 at 6:49 pm

To me this sounds like “Web 3.0″. While 2.0 is all about community, 3.0 is likely to be about intelligent machines “figuring out” what you want.

Let us take the search engine world. Today’s search engines take your query and present a platter of choices. Wouldn’t it be nice if they took your query, guessed a lot of background information, and presented you the most relevant page (or at least a shortlist of 5 relevant pages).

For example, if I have been looking at travel websites just prior to entering “New Orleans” in the search engine, the engine should be able to figure out that I am not interested in the political fallout of Katrina, but rather in flights to Louisiana on the forthcoming long weekend.

Let me take another example from the RSS world. I subscribe to your blog, so obviously I am interested in what you write. However, since our interests match, chances are that I am also interested in what you *read*. So I will find value in a feed reader that looks at feeds *you* subscribe to, filters them for stuff I am likely to have an interest in, and presents it to me as a collated feed.

I think this paradigm of the web, if done right, can make our lives enormously simpler, yet more enriching. So don’t diss it just yet on grounds that “any service that tries to guess my taste is of no use to me”. Maybe such services don’t do a good job of it today, but they will only improve in the future.

Full disclosure: I work for Adobe Systems, but this is not an endorsement of the service. I have no connection with the MyFeedz project, and these views are entirely personal.

Ashish on February 19, 2007 at 6:09 am

Hey Ritesh!
Thanks for dropping by.
I agree with your statement
“I think this paradigm of the web, if done right, can make our lives enormously simpler, yet more enriching.” – the keyword is “if done right’.
Many attempts have been made to understand the user behavior [e.g. Y! music is a classic failure [IMHO], while I love Pandora [and it's serendipity factor]..

Let me play with myFeedz – and then share my experience.

-Ashish

Marius Zaharia on February 19, 2007 at 9:52 am

Hi Ashish,

I think your initial perspective on myFeedz is somehow biased.

The product doesn’t really “guesstimate” what you should read. It doesn’t matter that your favorite feeds are not very popular within the community. You can still get interesting articles from them. In fact, you can get articles ONLY from them, by toggling between “My feeds only/All feeds” in the right corner of your article lists.

What myFeedz does is not guess what you would like to read, but learn from what you actually read.

All the best,
Marius

Ashish on February 19, 2007 at 11:55 am

Hi Marius
Thanks for dropping by.
Well, you are right to a certain extent that my views are biased about any AI product. [esp. after my experience with other products that aims to understand the end user, but has failed in their attempt to do so]…

Let me get involved with myFeedz a little more!!..

Steven on February 19, 2007 at 5:35 pm

Hey,
Honestly I found myFeedz a little confusing..
The UI is a little cloggy..and isn’t partitioned well. and I havent had a moment of “wow” till now..