Search and Bloglines

I'm glad to see that Bloglines intends to do something about search this summer. Afterall web-based news aggregators have such potential; they have a far more intimate understanding of what a person is interested in than any web-based search engine and they have access to a far more complete set of data than any desktop-based news aggregator.

Clearly some of it is going to relate to improving the results that come back from the 'search' box. Here's hoping that includes a personalised component. By their very nature news aggregators make use of a user profile; specifically a personalised list of subscribed feeds. Furthermore a feed seems to be a new and useful unit to work in. There are things I can say about my relationship to a feed that I cannot say of individual posts.

For example I might wish to say 'ignore any unread posts more than two days old' for some feeds. Obviously such an ability would not only relate to search, it would have a direct impact on the everyday user experience of a news aggregator. But it is precisely that streamlined user experience that made news aggregation so much better than its predecessor. As news aggregation becomes ever more successful, that streamlined user experience is itself beginning to be a bit more of a chore. What is needed is a way of pruning out some of the posts without throwing out that delightful 'a-ha' discovery moment.

Consider another example; I think I could easily categorize my subscribed feeds into those representing 'though-leaders', those that should be 'watched' and 'others'. The idea is that 'watched' feeds only occasionally contain something that interests me - I don't want to be informed about every new post. The criteria for bringing a post to my attention is that it has been referenced by two or more posts from 'though-leaders'.

Getting the user to provide additional information explicitly to a news aggregator (more than just a set of subscribed feeds) may seem old-fashioned compared to those efforts that seek to glean more information about the user from their behaviour. However it appears to me to build upon one of the things that set news aggregators apart in the first place. Furthermore the concept of a 'feed' provides the necessary high-level construct about which to collect such information.

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