With over 120 million sources of news and blog content, the web is a flood of information whose very breadth often makes it difficult to find the best information for expert and novice users alike. While there are well recognized sources for a few key topics such as technology or political news, there are a large number of other topics whose best information is lost in the 120+ million sources.
What's Wrong with Existing Newsletters?
The existing methods of search revolve around finding previously existing content. For users who want to stay on top of new information, often the only choices are to manually revisit selected sites or subscribe a clipping service if available. Problems with these approaches include:
- Knowing the best sites for topic specific information
- Sites with good content but with infrequent posts often loose repeat visitor interest
- Niche topics may not have good clipping service representation
- Inability to prioritize search results on newness rather than popularity.
Email newsletters have been a popular way to overcome these limitations and good newsletters exist in some very popular topics such as technology or news. However, there are often problems with this approach as well including:
- Newsletters often represent only one publisher or one site's contents
- Newsletters on niche topics often don't exist or are lost in the 120+ million web sources
- Newsletters must be “published” and so require human intervention to create.
How can Newsletters Be Improved?
Given this set of problems, a new paradigm is required to get new content to interested readers. This paradigm must feature:
- Citizen editors to research and identify the best sources of web content for a specific topic
- Automatic creation and distribution of newsletters to eliminate publishing time
- Searchable directory of newsletters to help connect new readers to existing product
- Community discussions to help readers connect with editors and new readers to identify the best topical newsletters.
What is a FeedLetter?
This paradigm is addressed in the concept of a “FeedLetter”. A FeedLetter relies on a “citizen editor” to pull together content from one or more RSS feeds. These feeds can be filtered using keywords to include or reject specific articles. Then, the newsletter is available online or can be delivered automatically via email to subscribers as new content becomes available and on a schedule the reader defines.
- A FeedLetter is great for:
- Pulling together web content
- Creating newsletters or niche topics
- Building a community of interest
- Delivering new content in near real time as users request
- Optimizing content for iPhones or Blackberrys.
As a FeedLetter's citizen editor users can:
- Name their newsletter
- Include and filter RSS feeds
- Provide easy links for subscriber signup
- Control the formatting of the newsletter using one of the built-in templates or design their own
- Insert their own introduction that displays at the beginning of every newsletter
- Review newsletter statistics including readership, popular articles and viewing habits
In creating a FeedLetter, an editor can:
- Solve problems for themselves and easily share that solution with others
- Help build their brand by becoming identified with specialized topics
- Attract new customers by assisting others get information they want
When receiving a FeedLetter, a subscriber can:
- Tailor a schedule that works best for them
- Optimize the FeedLetter display for reading on mobile devices
- Read back issues online
- Easily subscribe or unsubscribe to multiple FeedLetters through a single account.
A FeedLetter addresses the problems with typical newsletters while at the same time giving readers more control over how and when content is delivered.