Feed similarity: the Also Subscribe To feature

I started to write yesterday about this but decided to wait until something happened. I’m glad I did because the end result was much cooler than I described.

While I was chatting with Dave at the end of his Microsoft talk, two folks came up and asked if there were a way to cut through some of the noise of the RSS ocean based on recommendations. The young woman described it as “people who subscribe to feed X also subscribed to feed y.” Dave first told them that the SDK was open to anyone to code against, then got out his cell phone, called Andrew Grumet, and gave the phone over to Shira who described the idea to him.

I had to leave at that point so I didn’t know how it would turn out. But yesterday Andrew had the first version of Similar Feeds up and running, and Dave pointed to it last night. Here’s my similarity list.

(Incidentally, thanks to all for the comments and pointers over the last couple of days. It’s been helpful hearing other peoples’ perspectives. Shouts out to Tom Harper (subscribed) and Korby Parnell (subscribed).)