RSS Reading Lists

The latest topic in the RSS aggregator community is the use of OPML for Reading Lists, Identity and syndication of attention. News aggregators have long supported the import / export of the users subscriptions using OPML but this is a static process - if you subscribe to an OPML file then you will get updated when something is added to / removed from the reading list. This makes it possible to publish your reading interests in an area for others to follow - somewhat like the blogroll that you see along the sides of some blogs. You could also use this to share your subscriptions between different aggregators - e.g. between Bloglines and Netnewswire. Dare Obasanjo has a post discussing some of the issues of how desktop aggregators should deal with these reading lists - hopefully server based readers like Bloglines and Google Reader will make it easier to publish a reading list too. In an upcoming post, I'm describe a scheme for syndicating RSS feed ping state as part of an OPML description of an RSS reading list or directory.