” For example, when this item is viewed through FriendFeed they will allow comments on it “over there” and I’ll probably miss them unless I go look for them. I will certainly miss the comments on Shyftr which I have never heard of until today and have never used, but from what I hear it does the same thing. Is this a good or bad thing? Well if you like to know what people think it’s bad.” - Dave Winer

You’ve probably noticed, Cullect doesn’t ask you to create a new account to use it. It assumes you write on a weblog (or Twitter, or Tumblr) and that you want to continue.

This means when you read something worth writing about in any Cullect.com reading list (whether you’re a curator or not) it’s easy to publish to your weblog (or Twitter, or Tumblr).

Now there may be cases where you’d prefer to write a comment on the article’s originating website rather than your own. Some feeds publish the url for each article’s comments in the comments tag. This is the ‘Comments’ link sometimes available in an article’s footer. Click that link and you’ll be sent to the article’s comment form.

Whether your reaction is published on the original site or your own, Cullect tries its best to connect them. Making it easy for everyone to follow the conversation, wherever it lives. It just doesn’t live here.

1 Comments

• At April 12, 2008, Arik Jones wrote:

  I couldn't agree more. I want to read first, discuss later. Thats how all feed reader user stories should go.

Reading a straight RSS feed, let along a double- or triple-digit number of them, without any filtering is a little like checking email without a spam filter. There’s a lot of stuff you just don’t need to pay any attention to. There are a number of services with different approaches to feed filtering (FeedRinse, AideRSS to name just 2).

Cullect takes a different approach. Rather than automatically removing items from a feed ¹, Cullect ranks all the items in the reading list (whether from 1 feed or hundreds) based on their ‘importance’. It’s this ranking, the ‘Important’ tab, that is the default view in any Cullect.com reading list.

What’s ‘Important’?

It’s a special combination of a number of attributes from the item and the feed it came from, including;

• How many people in Cullect have recommended it?
• How many incoming links does the item have?
• How many paying members of Cullect are giving money to that feed?

‘How recently was item was published?’ isn’t even in the top 5 ². This helps solve the problem Mike Keliher identified - where the reverse chronological nature of feed reading buries the story originator.

Importance takes time to identify. Plus, how relevant a given item is to you, is most likely independent of when it was published. So, rather than spend 30 minutes scanning your feeds for anything good - try out Cullect.com’s Important rank - the good stuff is at the top.

1. The ‘hide’ command makes it easy to quickly remove unwanted items.
2. That’s what the ‘Latest’ tab is for.

2 Comments

• At March 21, 2008, Mike Keliher wrote:

  Funny. I never thought I was hinting at something so significant with that little observation about the order of feed-reader items.

  I really like this "important" feature. Very cool.

  What do you mean by "giving money to that feed"? Is there actually money changing hands between Cullect users and content publishers, or does Cullect just put more weight on things paying users read?

• At March 21, 2008, Garrick Van Buren wrote:

  Mike - paying members of Cullect.com have the option of donating 30-50% of their monthly membership fee to a feed of their choosing. Cullect.com will contact the feed publisher and get the money to them via PayPal or something similar.

“I’m not even going to talk about how you can pay cullect so that part of your monthly subscription goes to publishers you read. I can’t even tell you how cool I think that is.” - Tony Thomas

After talking about the feed support aspect of Cullect.com in a demo yesterday, the response was:

“You’re not really giving the feeds money.”

Yes. Yes, I am. In fact, I contacted feed publisher today about how to pass along a Cullect.com member’s donation to them.

I’ve also made it easy for publishers to see their stats including donations. It’s both the feed stats widget and the Cullect.com Robot’s Message, of course - you’ll also see it in your PayPal account.

As I’ve mentioned before, supporting the publishers you enjoy reading increases their importance within your reading lists and everyone else’s.

So, if you like Minneapoliscast, join Cullect.com and give a percentage of your membership back to Tony.

mjkeliher and mnheadhunter have helped me identify a fairly serious bug with Cullect reading lists when viewed in Internet Explorer v6 or v7.

IE really wants to give you the reading list’s _feed_, rather than the HTML page.

I’m investigating workarounds. Until I get to the bottom of this, try a different browser.

Thanks, and sorry.

UPDATE
If you’re running IE - could you load up a reading list (i.e. http://cullect.com/1/latest) and let me know if you see the gray left-hand column w/ ‘feeds’, ‘curators’, etc in it. Thanks.

1 Comments

• At August 19, 2008, MN Headhunter wrote:

  I see it.

Cullect has a simple javascript widget that displays all the information Cullect has about your feed, all in a single line of code, all ready for embedding on your own blog:




You can see the Feed Stats widget in action right here at blog.cullect.com and at GarrickVanBuren.com. For more the sites using it, check out the Widget archive of this blog.

By default, the Feed Stats widget shows;

• 10 Most Important items as ranked by Cullect.com’s Importance algorithm
• Amount of money donated and number of patrons to the feed
• The lists of reading lists the feed is in
• Link to create new Cullect reading list with the feed
• Link back to Cullect.com

If you’d rather show the 10 Most Important items, change the code to include “selected=recommended“: