I ran across BlogFlock, a new service by Raphael Kabo that takes a social approach to RSS feeds, and decided to give it a look. BlogFlock is entirely built on open RSS feeds and allows users to create lists of RSS feeds that others can then follow. Think of it as a way to build a custom timeline using RSS in the open. It isn’t a Feed Reader because it isn’t just your feed or list and there is no read or unread status. It is more in the spirit of a “river of news” feed that anyone can use.

I was having fun with it and decided to create a list I’ve always wanted for Manuel Moreale’s excellent People & Blogs project. I created a BlogFlock list for People & Blogs and yes, I actually added all 66 blogs to the list (some exceptions noted below). That wasn’t super fun but it is done and adding each new one is simple enough.

I had previously thought of doing something like this in Feedbin but it isn’t public so it kind of missed the point. I wanted something more like a “river of news” for it. So BlogFlock was a perfect approach.

It seems to be working really well and I like the way it works. Check out the People & Blogs List and give it a look.

Some notes for BlogFlock.

  1. You should be able to subscribe to the RSS feed for the list itself. In this way BlogFlock could be an aggregator and then I could add that lists aggregated RSS feed to my feed reader.
  2. You for sure should be able to create a list by importing an OPML file.
  3. Lists should be exportable via OPML as well.
  4. The description for a blog in a list is hopefully scoped just to that list. So if I add the same feed to two different lists I would want a different description for each one.
  5. You should be able to manually reorder the blogs in a list.
  6. It could handle posts without titles a bit better.
Auto-generated description: A website page featuring blog post listings and a sidebar with names under People & Blogs.

On this list itself it contains all 66 blogs that have been highlighted in People & Blogs thus far, with these exceptions:

  • P&B 9: Ray Thomas has no RSS feed.
  • P&B 43: Devastatia has adult content so I left it out.
  • P&B 60: Steyn Viljoen has no RSS feed.

PS: It turns out Manu has a similar People & Blogs List on Feedland.