tag:,2009:/1/tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839- 2009-10-30T14:51:22Z Comments for Microcontent Aggregators: Suprglu Movable Type 4.23-en tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839 2006-05-03T12:49:46Z 2007-12-16T23:16:03Z Microcontent Aggregators: Suprglu In part 3 of my look at mc aggregators [here are parts 1 and 2], I get stuck into Suprglu. In this post I ask the question: how sticky is this site? But enough puns, let's get down to business. SuprGlu, a production of New York design studio Iridesco, is another product that enables users... Richard MacManus http://www.readwriteweb.com suprgluIn part 3 of my look at mc aggregators [here are parts 1 and 2], I get stuck into Suprglu. In this post I ask the question: how sticky is this site? But enough puns, let's get down to business. SuprGlu, a production of New York design studio Iridesco, is another product that enables users to collect their content from various services (flickr, delicious, etc) and put it in one place.

Of the 3 such products I've profiled so far - 43Things, PeopleFeeds and Suprglu - the easiest one to use is Suprglu. The step-by-step set-up process is user-friendly and includes a long list of possible content sources: 

43 Things
All Consuming
Blogger
Clipmarks
del.icio.us
Digg
Flickr
Last.fm
LiveJournal
Simpy
Wordpress.com

If anything, it made me feel guilty for not having enough content sources! :-) It did seem to take a while for Suprglu to fetch the feeds, but it was a relatively minor issue. All in all, Suprglu has a nicely designed and helpful user interface.

Style a big plus

The other feature that stands out about Suprglu is the ability to not only choose from a range of default page designs, but you can also customize your CSS and create your own design. I haven't had time to do that myself, but a good example is Emily Chang's Suprglu page. So in effect, you can create a brand new blog based on all of your content sources - and you can style it just as you would a Movable Type or Wordpress blog. I can see this becoming increasingly appealing, as more and more content 'buckets' appear on the Web for users to create content in. An aggregate blog to be a home for all that content would be very handy. 

It also strikes me that commercial websites like Edgeio and Amazon should be rapt with services like Suprglu and PeopleFeeds. Because it's so easy to aggregate using Suprglu, it encourages consumers to collect and 'own' the content they input into edgeio or Amazon - and that theoretically encourages people to input content into many places. Of course, that behoves commercial companies to offer RSS feeds for user-generated content (I know edgeio does, but not Amazon to my knowledge).

suprglu

Suprglu is made out of open source technologies, including Ruby on Rails. Emily Chang interviewed the founders back in December and got this neat quote from them about what it does:

"SuprGlu is about allowing people to pick up the bits and pieces of themselves scattered around the web and being able to put it all together in the form of a digital scrapbook."

As far as my Suprglu page goes, I found the tags to be useful but minimalist (nowhere near as impressive as PeopleFeeds). It also only has one single RSS feed - for the whole page. No RSS feeds for tags/categories (that I could see) and no filtering options. So both 43Things and PeopleFeeds offer much more functionality in that respect. The main attraction to Suprglu is the ability to style your page - and in effect use it as your main blog.

Personal Content Networks

Finally I want to highlight a comment that Dick Costolo from Feedburner left on my previous post, about PeopleFeeds. Dick wrote:

"I love this concept. Let all the focused applications that are the best in their domains be the content management systems for that kind of content and then provide a framework for me to pull it all together. These kinds of Personal Content Networks will be a bigger and bigger part of the landscape. Very cool."

Personal Content Networks is a great term and neatly captures the value that services like 43Things, PeopleFeeds and Suprglu offer for users. Every day on the Web a new website turns up that wants "user-generated content" added to it - Flickr, delicious, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Digg, blogs of course, social networks like MySpace and Facebook, edgeio, Nooked, BBC - the list goes on. I have a feeling we'll be needing more of these personal Microcontent Aggregators before long.

]]> tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839-comment:37298 Comment from Richard Hemmer on 2006-05-03 Richard Hemmer http://stormgrass.com I've used SuprGlu in the past, and I like their simple approach to aggregating personal feeds.

A few days ago TechCrunch featured ziki.com, which aggregates feeds as well, but also adds some sort of social networking aspect to it.

]]> 2006-05-03T18:08:36Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839-comment:37299 Comment from Peter Cooper on 2006-05-03 Peter Cooper http://www.petercooper.co.uk/ It's not really the same as Superglu, but FeedDigest lets you do the same thing but then use it on your own site or page (if you have the technical knowledge). This means you can then put your own AdSense, own sidebars, and all that kind of stuff on there. It is definitely for more technical people though, and Superglu is great at how it requires no real technical knowledge to get going.

]]> 2006-05-03T18:59:39Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839-comment:37300 Comment from Mike on 2006-05-03 Mike http://chch-changes.blogspot.com/ What, in your (and others) opinion, is the difference (if any) between the "online desktop" (A) (I'm thinking Netvibes and the like) and the "Personal Content Network" (B).

Is it merely a matter of symantics as they are, in essence, supplying the same end-user experience in that "their info" is being delivered to them in one 'personalisable' place?

Or is there something else that one provides (is aiming at) that the other doesn't?

For my part I can see that the presentation of content using (B) seems to be much more legible and "newspaper-y" than (A) which have a more "functional" feel about them. One (B) is for reading, the other (A) is for doing things - is that it?

]]> 2006-05-03T23:40:35Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839-comment:37301 Comment from Severine on 2006-05-03 Severine http://ziki.com/people/severine Great series of posts which I read with a lot of interest. Agree with you, the need for personal Microcontent Aggregators will be growing. As well as the need to combine digital lifestyle aggregation with social networking so people can piece together their digital life while keeping in touch with their contacts and making new connections. Don't know if you've heard of Ziki People (Richard Hemmer actually mentionned it in a previous comment). But if you haven't, may I suggest you check it out :-) Just launched 2 weeks ago. It's a combination of personal content aggregation and open social/business networking. Regards, Severine

]]> 2006-05-03T23:49:26Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839-comment:37302 Comment from Peter Cooper on 2006-05-04 Peter Cooper http://www.petercooper.co.uk/ Mike: The primary difference from my POV is that you don't really share entire Netvibes pages, but Superglu is something that other people can look at and use rather than just you. I mean.. really you wouldn't need to see your Flickr, del.icio.us, etc, all together, as you know what you put there, so it's all for other people.

]]> 2006-05-04T07:02:12Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839-comment:37303 Comment from emre on 2006-05-04 emre http://grou.ps If you like SuprGlu, you may like GROU.PS too.. Check out http://grou.ps/learn_more.do

]]> 2006-05-04T15:12:49Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4839-comment:37304 Comment from Mike on 2006-05-05 Mike http://chch-changes.blogspot.com Thanks for the response Peter (and I suspect you're right) - left a comment on Richards follow-up posting ...

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