A while ago, i had struggled to articulate my needs from RSS feeds ... Danah's done a fine job in her post on what she wants from RSS feeds where she says :

"When i first started using RSS, i was ecstatic. Rather than relying on going to each person's page, i could just throw them all in one place and go through them. I'm a bit more disillusioned now.  I got all excited and started adding every blog that had an interesting thread. Almost humorously, i started breaking after about 150 regularly updated blogs. Worse: i miss half of the interesting posts that i want to read because i'm too overwhelmed.

This made me sit back and think about what kind of an RSS feed i want ...... "

Read more of her beautifully articulated needs : 

• to watch an entry, topic or person 
• for topic-based RSS requests. "Tell me anyone within 3 degrees of my network who is talking about 'rape' or 'domestic violence'." 
• for tools that can allow friends to "pass on information that they think is relevant. But i want to make it easy for them. And perhaps have a mechanism to say "THANK YOU!"

Feedster search in my Sharpreader and PubSub do take care of the first need for me in some ways .... i have often typed in keywords including author/blogname and topic, subscribed to the feed, and as a result, have been able to follow a line of thought.  Following a specific entry with comments and trackbacks though, isn't really that easy, to the best of my knowledge. 

9:55:47 AM    comment []  trackback []