The popular RSS aggregator web site, ReadBurner is no more. Today, the site’s homepage reads:
“I’m sorry to announce that ReadBurner is no longer availiable. The reason is that I just don’t have time to keep the site up and running, because of some freelance projects that I cannot drop out. I really want to thank all of you guys for supporting me, giving me feedback and visiting ReadBurner. It’s been very exiting to run a website that got so much Buzz from the blogosphere in such a short period of time. If you are still interested in the idea of ReadBurner I suggest you to try out RSSmeme which is a very well done clone of ReadBurner developed by Benjamin Golub.”
ReadBurner was certainly an interesting project (our coverage) and really showed us some cool ways to view and read feeds. The site, which showed popular items shared publicly from Google Reader’s Shared Items, was a favorite of many RSS users. ReadBurner would sort RSS feeds that Google Reader users shared into “Popular” and “Upcoming” categories, similar to the way Digg does, while showing the number of shares for each item.
So now, with the closing of ReadBurner, we’re left with RSSmeme for our aggregated RSS reading. Although this site has no “Upcoming” Category, its “Most Recent” category essentially shows the same thing. The “Popular this Week” and “Most Popular” categories show the items with the most action and number of shares they each received. RSSmeme also shows which users shared the item and it allows for users to leave comments about the story on the RSSmeme homepage. Another nice feature of RSSmeme is the “Explore” feature, which allows you to “read more of this story” or “explore similar stories,” using links placed below the story itself.
The RSSmeme site’s display can be customized to show the number of stories and minimum amount of shares you would like to see displayed on the page, and, whether customized or not, each page has its own RSS feed. While reading through the shared items, you can set the preview setting to show none of the story’s text, some of it, or a full preview, a feature usually found only in desktop readers like FeedDemon.
It’s a shame that ReadBurner had to shut down, but as long as we have RSSmeme, I guess we will survive.The ReadBurner domain name and technology it uses is up for sale, if you’re interested. An email address for more information is on the ReadBurner homepage.
