Hey! You got RSS in my IM!
Monday, August 21, 2006
Adam Kalsey, founder and former CTO of Pheedo, has launched a new service called Feed Crier, which will deliver real-time RSS updates using popular instant messaging programs. Although Feed Crier only supports AIM, Kalsey noted that he was planning to support other programs, such as Yahoo! Messenger, MSN/Live Messenger, and Jabber. The basic service, which allows up to four feeds, is free - While the premium subscribers can receive unlimited amounts of feeds, remove the advertisements in alerts, and use a Web interface to manage their feeds. Even though there are other services that offer the same functionality, $4 per month isn't very steep.Marshall Kirkpatrick notes that there are handful of other competitors, including Immedi.at, Zaptxt, and Rasasa. Many of these services mentioned aren't limited to AIM, and offer even more advanced features than Feed Crier, such as auto-discovery of feeds and SMS and e-mail alerts. Rasasa, with its "push technology", is rumored to be one of the best services around. Feed Crier might be able to stand up to these already-established services by providing to other companies. Tailrank, a popular meme-tracker created by Kevin Burton, and TagJag, a popular meta-search engine run by Chris Pirillo, have already signed up to provide IM alerts to their users.
