Let the Realtime Web Find You with Lazyfeed

Lazyfeed is an web appliction that helps you discover new stuff. You tell it what you like by connecting it to sites you’re already interested in or by asking the simple question, “What interests you?” Lazyfeed  is an aggregator, kind of like FriendFeed, but it works in a slightly different manner. Instead of finding content based on where it came from, you discover things based on topics and tags.

What It Does

Lazyfeed is still in private beta, so you’ll need an invite. Just follow @lazyfeed and they’ll send you one at some point. They recently gave each user 3 invite codes to share with friends, so you can simply ask around or search for one. One thing that you have to remember about Lazyfeed is that it doesn’t work like other aggregators. You add your blog or Twitter to FriendFeed so that others can access that content, but you add them to Lazyfeed so that it can figure out what you like to see.

Once you’re signed in, you’ll see a list of Hot Topics. If any of them interest you, click it and Save it. This means that you will receive live updates on that topic in the left sidebar. You probably want to connect your own sites like Twitter and your blog. This will give you a base to draw from when looking for new things. You can try and treat Lazyfeed like an RSS reader, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Many are calling Lazyfeed an RSS reader or comparing it to Google Reader, but that seems nonsensical to me based on how it operates.

Let’s walk through a detailed example. Connecting Blackweb 2.0 to my Lazyfeed account isn’t going to dump all of our posts there. Lazyfeed looks at Blackweb 2.0 and pulls topics and tags from it. When I go to “Topics for Lazy Rahsheen” on the footer of the site, I’ll be able to browse those topics and decide if I want to Save them. In this case, I notice the topic “SEORapper”  and decide to Save it for later. Now, that topic updates in realtime in my sidebar. Clicking it brings me news about the SEO Rapper from across the web, not just Blackweb 2.0.

Why You Want It

Ever found a blog or site you really liked and wished you could find more like it? Is it hard for you to locate topics relevant to you using standard methods? Is your RSS reader bursting at the seams and you honestly couldn’t care less? Need more cowbell? Lazyfeed is probably for you. Find yourself an invite and let us know what you think about it in the comments.