You're right Paul - eventually all aggregators will support hierarchical OPML browsing. I just use the term "Feed Grazer" to differentiate between the aggregators that already support hierarchical browsing and those that don't yet.
However, that's not quite the end of the story as regards feed grazers. Its not just about the ability to navigate multi-level hierarchies - its about providing advanced management features for transient feeds. These include drag and drop re-arrangement of nodes and hierarchical tree branches, support for reading lists (ie. dynamic feed lists), etc (hey, I'm on the board of Grazr Corp. - I can't give it all away! ;-)
Another point of difference is that Grazers approach feed management from the "subscriptions are dead" point of view. In an RSS everywhere world, ie. where there are thousands of feeds you'll want quick if fleeting access to) it makes no sense to talk about subscriptions. We can't possibly make long term contracts with each and every feed. What we'll want is a way of managing feeds such that we can access them briefly in an organized way for as long as they are relevant to us and then be rid of them just as quickly.
Paul Watson
· 3 years ago
Good points James and I am happy to read Grazr Corp is tackling them. We are working on similar temporal live subscriptions in FeedHenry. It is a challenge though as it is easy to annoy users with "intelligent" systems that get relevance and attention wrong.
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However, that's not quite the end of the story as regards feed grazers. Its not just about the ability to navigate multi-level hierarchies - its about providing advanced management features for transient feeds. These include drag and drop re-arrangement of nodes and hierarchical tree branches, support for reading lists (ie. dynamic feed lists), etc (hey, I'm on the board of Grazr Corp. - I can't give it all away! ;-)
Another point of difference is that Grazers approach feed management from the "subscriptions are dead" point of view. In an RSS everywhere world, ie. where there are thousands of feeds you'll want quick if fleeting access to) it makes no sense to talk about subscriptions. We can't possibly make long term contracts with each and every feed. What we'll want is a way of managing feeds such that we can access them briefly in an organized way for as long as they are relevant to us and then be rid of them just as quickly.