How to introduce the newbies to the Irish Feedosphere

Its terrific to see so many Irish bloggers using Technorati and Flickr tags (like "Irish Blog Awards") to denote their journalistic references to the event last Saturday night in Dublin. It means we can easily aggregate all these snippets into one viewing area and even monitor RSS feeds for notification of added items.

But take a step back and imagine what it's like for an internet newbie who, after listenting to Damien Mulley on Fanning last week, had their curiosity piqued and now just wants learn more about what went on at the Alexander Hotel. Try explaining to them how they can -

Subscribe in an aggregtor to the RSS feeds for the "Irish Blog Awards" tag in Technorati, Flickr and social bookmarking systems like del.icio.us.

- and watch their eyes glaze over as each of the underlined words goes sailing over their heads. Don't we old timers take so much jargon for granted? Do we realize just what a barrier to entry this mumbo jumbo is?

Wouldn't it be nice if the newbie had a truly easy way to see what happened on Saturday night? You said yes, didn't you? Well now there is - just point them to the Open Irish Directory as viewed in the Grazr sandbox (leave out the lingo, just pass them the link!) and tell them to follow the following path -

Computers & Communications -> Industry Events & Exhibitions -> Irish blog Awards 2006 -> Reports -> Flickr photos

Click on the blue bar in the left hand margin at any time to go back up a level (scroll left). That's it - a single link and simpe instructions. No techno lingo. Just the goods!

Another useful path, starting again from the top level, is -

News & Media -> Blogging -> etc

- to which every Irish blogger should eventually be added. By the way, you could also point the newbie to the directory as seen in Optimal or OPod. And soon there will be even more options.

UPDATE: The Technorati feed is causing problems at the moment but do try the Flickr feed :)

UPDATE 2: This post was originally entitled - "How to introduce newbies to the Irish Blogosphere", but that wasn't an accurate description. As Damien Mulley pointed out in the comments IrishBlogs.ie is a great way to do that and a prize winning way at that! What I'm trying to show on the other hand is how to make it easier for newbies to access all these great feeds emanating out of Irish blogs, photo collections, podcasts and so on.

Comments

[Damien Mulley]

I'd tell a newbie they can read bloggers at http://www.irishblogs.ie

Only later would I introduce them to personal aggregators and how to subscribe when they ask about expanding or refining their reading list.

I certainly wouldn't bring up geek porn such as Technorati or delicious which are far too gimmicky and not very useful for the core objective of reading blogs.

[simon]

Hell I don't even know the use of RSS and I have been blogging for about 9 months and I can programme in some languages so I don't have a technophopia. :)

I would just say Blogging is an internet opinion column about what ever you wish. People will pick up the nuances of it later

[Des Field Corbett]

I just been blogging for a few weeks now but the biggest issue I've faced isn't finding blogs but tagging my own.

I haven't been able to find a single place that said:
heres what a tag is (ever notice Technorati's "What is a tag" page doesn't tell you what a tag is?

Also although I've setup pings and categories I'm still not sure I'm doing it right.

I have a feeling that because this stuff all kind of organically grew up one on the other not many people have said whats it like to start from scrath.

Am I just being thick?

[James Corbett]

Certainly not Des, these are definitely valid issues and part of my reasoning for a fresh look at how we present the feedosphere to 'the newbies'. I'm mainly thinking about it from the consumption side but of course the complexity on the publication side needs to be addressed too.