I saw a few posts about MyFeedz yesterday and checked it out, and I noticed Robert just gave Myfeedz a test. He is a hardcore feed reader, so I value his opinion (even though we don’t always agree on everything).
I think Robert is being extremely polite about MyFeedz
MyFeedz Sucks as a Feed Reader
To qualify that, let me show you the “user experience” I went though, and how amazingly let down I felt having given it some of my time.
When I first logged in, this supposedly intelligent RSS Reader presented me with a selection of articles possibly based upon analysis of my own blog.
So I imported the OPML from my Google Reader Account.
After importing this is what I was presented with to read
I think at this time I should point out that none of those articles are from my OPML file, and possibly one is relevant to what I sometimes read, but that is on an article directory rather than a blog.
So I tried refining things a little:-
There are the tags that were defined for me to start with
These are the tags that MyFeedz suggests that I pick from. By selecting a few, and then refreshing the display, slowly a few more tags appear, that might even refer to specific blogs I read every day. Also note that at this time they hadn’t imported all my OPML, just a small cross section.
The front page view didn’t change – the stories being listed in the main panel were not from my selected feeds. That only thing related to my OPML were excerpts in the sidebar. Most of the feeds in my OPML file are full content, so only receiving a small selection and just excerpts wasn’t useful. I wasn’t getting what I wanted to read.
So I left MyFeedz for a while and went to write about something else
A few hour later I received an email from MyFeedz stating that they have processed all my feeds from my OPML. As I am writing this, it is a day later, so in theory they have had plenty of time to work out what I read, and grab the feeds.
First of all here are all the tags I now have selected. It doesn’t cover everything, because as an example I read a lot about WordPress Plugins, and I haven’t been given that option.
Who knows, maybe it will give me a selection of the blogs I want to read.
As far as I am concerned, MyFeedz were successful in creating a…
Total Disaster
Here is my new front page
Only one of the blogs on my front page is in my OPML file, and the article listed is 3 days old.
You can however get a little more personalized if you go tag exploring.
Tag Exploring
With tags you can select only your subscribed feeds, and sort by both date and relevance.
Browsing your tags is extremely slow – I am not talking unresponsive or a little laggy – I am talking click a tag and then switch tabs to do something else for a while – infuriatingly slow.
It is actually so unresponsive that it is preventing me doing a complete review.
A tag view lists posts that in some way were tagged or related to that term, so maybe a domain name. Occasionally it also offers some meme like features (think Techmeme or Megite) with links to related posts.
Tag searching seems to have just ground to a halt, so no screenshot will be forthcoming.
I currently can’t see a use for MyFeedz – it isn’t a Feed Reader – no river of news, no way to mark what you have read, no way to read a specific blog, and no way that I can see to look at the history.
It can’t compete with a meme tracker especially for speed to find out the hot discussions in a particular niche. If you want a meme of your own OPML, take Megite for a spin.
As for specific keywords or tags, you are far better off using Technorati or Google Blogsearch.
Sharing
Robert mentioned sharing in his writeup – there is a way to share with MyFeedz. There are RSS feeds for each tag, and while you are reading you can add a tag to something, so you could use personal tags as thus create a shared feed of your selections.
The problem is I am not sure you would want to share something you haven’t read, thus you will end up having to click through to every site before you share something extremely frustrating.
For Niche Marketing
It is another source for creating tag based RSS feeds that you can feed to content sites on autopilot, thus I am sure many people will find a use for it 😉
*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu
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