Woo Hoo! A DIY Embryonic Brainsieve

This is awesome because if you know me, you KNOW I don’t know a G-D thing about developing, coding or, for that matter, following directions.

YET,

Using NewsGator Editor’s Desk (they are a client) I just hacked together a very awkward-looking but interesting little widget AND made it into a Facebook application. It’s an ugly* little alpha-proto-pre-prototype, but it took me less than an hour with no previous experience.

This widget is showing you the two most “popular” items from each of 6 of my feeds: Pistachio Consulting, Twitter, Flickr, Brainsieve, Qik and YouTube. The popularity data is limited because it is keying off the behavior of anyone using any NewsGator RSS tool to read any of these feeds. In the case of PistachioConsulting.com that means 22 users. The other feeds have fewer – or no – subscribers. But still.

It’s also a Facebook application, should you care to install a funky-lookin box of my content on your Facebook page. (NOTE: I haven’t had anyone test this out yet. I have no idea how it will look or work. YMMV. Don’t Drink & Drive)

But this is PRECISELY what I was getting at last November when I launched Brainsieve. I wanted a way to pull together “best of” content (as defined by how people interact with the content, not what I thought was cool) from anywhere that I was “broadcasting.” I wanted to put it all in one place, and I wanted it to self-editorialize. Meaning, “observe” audience interest and self-select the pieces that are most interacted with.

I realize that FriendFeed, SocialThing and any number of web presence aggregators also come close to the Brainsieve model, but here’s the point: a totally non-technical layperson built this and made it into a Facebook Application. For that matter, the widget above can be lifted and put anywhere. So this nontech chick not only built the tool, but the tool itself self-replicates. UPDATE: It also permits you to email and rate each individual item…

How ya like them apples? I’m impressed. What could you build?

*Believe me, there are way more configuration/beautification options here, I was just going for a quick proof-of-concept.

UPDATE: The Facebook application itself is not the point. Unless you’re an avid fan, or, say, my mother, you probably don’t need a widget displaying the “best of” what I have published on 6 of my RSS feeds. It could be prettified into a “Pistachio Channel” by which you could consume only the most popular things that I post, instead of trying to follow me a ton of different places, or drowning in a “Lifestream” that sends you every item I ever publish. It’s a “sampler.” The ability to read attention data (was the item read, emailed, shared, bookmarked, rated etc?) and sort the RSS feed accordingly is really hot though.

What’s amazing is that I can’t code my way out of a box. There was No. Coding. Work. Whatsoever to build this. Yet you can grab and re-publish the widget, email any item in it to a friend, rate any of the items, subscribe as a Facebook App, etc. etc.

Put differently, you can take ANY RSS feeds, combine them how you like (by popularity or date, # of items per feed, etc.) build a widget and convert that into a Facebook Application without ANY coding ability.

Tagged as: brainsieve, Facebook, microsharing, RSS, socially-mediated, Syndication and Feeds, Web feed