Superfeedr Now Adds Location to Feeds Automatically
Real-tme feed publishing startup Superfeedr has quietly turned on automatic location data in the feeds it republishes from around the web, we confirmed with the company today. Founder Julien Genestoux explained the feature using Twitter as his example, but the same content extraction and analysis is being done on all kinds of feeds run through the service.
"If you turn geolocation on in Twitter, then your feed will include geolocation in your Tweets and we'll just push that through," he said. "If you don't do that but you Tweet about Austin, we will deliver the latitude and longitude for Austin in the XML." In other words, developers building apps on top of Superfeedr's real-time feeds will now know programmatically what geographic locations are discussed in the content coming through the feeds. Future feature? Subscribing to content by location instead of by feed URL.
Genestoux says he is using a number of 3rd party services to extract this data, including the Yahoo Placemaker API. Along with this location data, the service also offers automatic language identification and is working on entity extraction and sentiment analysis.
The prospect of subscribing to content by location instead of by feed URL is an exciting one, though Genestoux says he's just beginning to develop it. Could that facilitate a location data stream that crosses and goes beyond the siloed location based social networks so widely discussed these days? We suspect that it could.
Superfeedr could be described as "FeedBurner 2.0" - for a more real-time and meta-data savvy web. The company was funded this Fall by real-time incubator Betaworks and media mogul Mark Cuban. Betaworks announced today that it has raised $20 million more to build out its portfolio of companies like Superfeedr, Bit.ly, Tweetdeck, Tumblr and more.
Share
Facebook
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Great! I'm using Superfeedr on my latest project ( http://feedingo.com ) and it's really good. I'm glad to see Julien is innovating in this space with features like this. Amazing API.
Suppose I don't want anyone adding information to my Pubsubhubbub enabled feed?
This has always been an issue that has never been resolved with Pubsubhubbub and RSSCloud. In federated hubs, what right does a downstream Hub have to modify content.
I was under the impression that changing from RSS to Atom was acceptable, but not changing the actual feed content. And even there it's questionable whether I want my content being changed to some proprietary format of my competitor.
This sounds like you are changing what information I deliver in my feeds.
Of course, it can be done by the end-user or the end-user's service and I believe they have every right to, but I'm expecting a PubSubHubbub Hub to be content agnostic.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but it clearly puts Superfeedr into a consumer application category, not a node in the federated distribution system.
Because now you are altering my content and redistributing it without my permission, no?
This is intended for academic discussion, BTW, not an attack on Superfeedr or Julien.
It's actually only a problem with RSSCloud if a Cloud is pushing to another Cloud, not if a cloud is pushing to a client or pinging each other.
Matt, we don't change the information! We add information of it's missing :)
Well, then you don't mind me adding some "missing" information to the Superfeedr software code? Nyuck Nyuck. : )
It's not that I don't like the idea, but one could argue that "anything between the entry or item tags is mine, don't change it please."
Are you adding this information inside the entry? Many might consider that the atomic unit. You are free to spread it around. That's implicit in the fact that I'm syndicating it.
But maybe I have good business reason for omitting itunes tags, for example.
Is it okay for you to add these to MY feed without my consent. Note that that is a much different thing than creating YOUR feed with the itunes tags you want.
I love this conversation for many reasons.
, then you don't mind me adding some "missing" information to the Superfeedr software code? Nyuck Nyuck. : )
I don't! Tell me what's missing, and I'll be gald to add it!
It's not that I don't like the idea, but one could argue that "anything between the entry or item tags is mine, don't change it please."
Are you adding this information inside the entry? Many might consider that the atomic unit. You are free to spread it around. That's implicit in the fact that I'm syndicating it.
Well, what about feedburner or other apps who explicitly rewrite the feed for the convenience of people who consume that feed?
But maybe I have good business reason for omitting itunes tags, for example.
Of course, don't assume we're forcing you to use our stuff :D You can obviosuly still go back to the original source if that's what you need!
Is it okay for you to add these to MY feed without my consent. Note that that is a much different thing than creating YOUR feed with the itunes tags you want.
Again, look at the feed readers, they add stuff to your feed for the conumer, like a "like" button, or a "share" button, or even, in some cases, geolocation , like we do...
I love this conversation for many reasons.
"If you turn geolocation on in Twitter, then your feed will include geolocation in your Tweets and we'll just push that through," he said. "If you don't do that but you Tweet about Austin, we will deliver the latitude and longitude for Austin in the XML." thank you