A beta version of the My AOL personalized web portal will incorporate news feeds as well as a feed search.
Really Simple Syndication has been touted as the next way to gather information from the Internet. Instead of browsing from one favorite site to the next, a user would subscribe to that site’s RSS feed; a news aggregator would collect those subscriptions in one place.
As a site updates, so does its feed, and those updates go to the aggregator as well. For the user, that means visiting one place to see all of their favored content. Like any technology, it has its proponents, while others have shrugged it off.
Count AOL among its proponents. The company has been actively transitioning itself from a subscription service to an ad-supported web portal. AOL engineers have been revamping code for the past year. One new development will be the integration of RSS functionality into the My AOL portal.
The My AOL beta offers a menu of feed categories on the left side of the page. Each category has a group of pre-selected options, and users can add an Atom or RSS feed of their choice via an input box at the bottom of the page.
Seven main categories appear as defaults in the My Feeds menu box, with their subselections displayed by clicking the category name:
• National News
• Business and Finance
• Sports
• Entertainment
• Technology
• Politics and Opinions
• Humor and Fun
The subselections feature mostly major media names, in addition to feeds from AOL content related to the topic. My AOL planned feed search function will sift through Feedster’s 11 million-plus feeds to find results related to the topic. Users will then be able to add those feeds to My AOL as well.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
