January 06, 2014

Feedshare.net Debuts for OPML, RSS Feed Swapping

Update: The previous version of this post said Brent Simmons, author of NetNewsWire, was also the author of FeedShare.net. Turns out I was very wrong! Arne Holzenburg was inspired by Brent's posts and did the work himself. Sorry about that, Arne and Brent!

While many people now get their news from social channels - making the feed subscription model seem rather quaint in a world surrounded by microupdates, RSS still plays an important role for those of us who never want to miss a single post.

One of the earliest tinkerers in RSS and the main coder behind the application which first got me addicted to feeds (See: RSS A Demanding Mistress), Brent Simmons, pointed to a retro OPML sharing service at Feedshare.net on to the Web, letting you share your news sources and find new sites through those posted from your peers. If you're starting to have flashbacks to 2006's Share Your OPML and 2008's Toluu (which debuted here), then that's because Feedshare.net performs essentially the same functionality - but unlike those other two sites, it actually still works here in 2014.

Share your OPML file on Feedshare.net

Arne Holzenburg, a frequent reader of Brent Simmons, like me, was inspired by Simmons' post Saturday that he lamented the lack of an OPML sharing service. Arne took the weekend and built Feedshare. You can find mine is at the expected URL: http://feedshare.net/louisgray/. You can walk through the list, get a direct link to the subscribed link, or hit Favorite to add it to your RSS reader of choice. Mine is Feedly.

Just the Feeds and Nothing but the Feeds.

To add your own OPML file to Feedshare.net, find your list of feeds in whatever RSS reader you use, and find where to export. Most make it pretty easy, which is one of the best things about supporting standards. Easy export, easy import. Take that OPML file and add it to Feedshare, and then tell people where they can find it. And maybe, if you tell enough people, your list will end up on Feedshare's popular page, which already has ten top participants.

That's it! You know what to do. Check out Feedshare.net, and if you've uploaded your OPML, share the link to your feeds and show me what sites I've been missing.