The feeds aggregators are hardly a novelty in the web world. Since the spread of the RSS feed aggregation projects have multiplied enormously, but they could never play a strategic role in the foreground. In many cases, the blog feed aggregators are used to create cross-category monitor that is somewhat discussed in social media, etc.
I remember that ever since 2002 we started experiencing the first issues of online magazines composed from different feed sources and although it was an innovative concept it never caught on because of the limitation of the look and feel management of content and particularly because of the rights to use thrid-party content.
Today, feed aggregators are experiencing a revival thanks to the iPad and have become a hot discussion topic in the world of Information Magazine as a potential future of news.
This is because unlike with the digital magazines, with iPad you are targeting the new ways of visual enjoyment of content (see TheDaily, Wired) and for that reason feed aggregators are seeking new ways of filtering and selecting content and ways of using.
The reason why I opened this topic is because I’m totally in love with an iPad app called BlancSpot that has an incredible UX. BlancSpot is a news feed aggregator, a yet simple app but I tried to use it in several ways with different content displaying that show them trying to turn it into something more similar to the television format.
Ok, there are many similar apps, just think of Flipboard, Pulse, Flud, Reeder or better still the mother of all the Google News Feed Aggregator, but they all miss the key element – an app with a unique UX.
Even news media like CNN, YouTube and Hulu / Fox (see CNN iReporter) have built a real business around promiscuous aggregation.
There are also experiments in other media that have influenced the radio. An example for this is Spreaker for which we made an interesting interview with Francesco Baschieri few weeks ago.
At this point I started to make some conclusions about how aggregators, at this particular time, are regaining credibility and ensuring a future in the business of digital, cause the market for web information is becoming more and more fragmented and noisy: News , Blog, Facebook share , Facebook page, Twitter, etc. ..
The big media companies have begun to understand that and are now offering their content to the digital media big aggregators brand disguised as Netflix, Amazon, Boxee and iTunesStore.
This trend, not yet fully erupted, will determine the next few years of design and developments (including the explosion of the content offered) in digital. The fragmentation of multi-channel communication not only of media but also of the brand will require ‘more and more’
- Aggregation solutions that are intelligent at the same time
- New Plans/search patterns, and relationship between the content aggregation
- New models of content, more and more object-oriented where you distribute original content and have the freedom to choose advertisers for the content and/or other property regardless of the device/app it appears on.
- New ways of using feeds.
The publishing market was the first that started this path although it has not yet identified a definitive way while following close behind the TV but with a certain distance as if waiting to see the right opportunity.
“An example? Search for “ Fiat 500″ on Google (random key phrase but a product with a large Italian presence on the network) and then try to understand from all the sources you find what’s the most authoritative (… and if you hurry) which will guarantee you to find the product you are looking for at first. “