For the past year, Feedly has been working to improve its overlay for Google Reader, presenting a more visual approach to feeds in a magazine-like format, essentially becoming a personalized start page, powered by RSS. As Google Reader has evolved, adding comments, likes and friend connections for more social elements, so too has Feedly evolved. This week, Feedly opted to take a step further, leveraging reader-created bundles and data from third party services, including Delicious and Google News, to help provide the best of the Web for many topics in a new feature they call Explore.
Feedly Explore Shows Staff Picks for Topics
Feedly's new Explore section shows three major columns, including "What do other people read?" highlighting bundles from well-known Web personalities, "Staff picks" on a handful of topics hand-selected by the Feedly team, and a "live search" for more than 25 popular items, intending to give a hint at the new Explore's power.
A Bundle from Google Reader's Jenna Bilotta
LouisGray.com Under the Microscope
From Feedly Explore, not only can you see what blogs Danny Sullivan and Jason Kottke recommend, but you can see the data behind those bundles, including their frequency of publishing, the number of subscribers they may have, keyword tags showing what they talk about, and some of their most recent featured articles. Of course, you have the option to subscribe to any blogs in the bundle, or the entire bundle, at any time.
Exploring Data for Rob Diana, Regular Geek
Feedly Explore Highlights Top Google Blogs, News
Feedly Explore Picks The Best Sources on Blogging
In addition to these three sections, Feedly Explore has a search function that taps into its data and the integrated third party services to find the best of the Web for that topic, be it for the typical Silicon Valley centric keywords like social media and blogging, or more mainstream topics, like farming or babies. The goal? Helping you find new sources and the "best" sources for a specific topic.
Feedly Explore Finds The Best News With Babies Tags
Feedly Explore Even Takes a Run at Farming
As Edwin Khodabakchian writes in his introductory blog this week, Feedly's metadata, data about the data, differentiates itself from the alternative.
"Google helps you find individual web pages but gives you little information about the sources. This is where we think we can help," Edwin said.Also included in Explore is a bundle of blogs from all the writers who have contributed to louisgray.com this year, so once you jump into your Feedly Explore, make sure to check that out.
To update to the latest Feedly, make sure you are running Firefox, and head to: http://update.feedly.com/release/feedly.xpi. If you're especially brave, after you do this, read the instructions on how to use Feedly in Safari. I've been doing this for a while, and it works great.