Paper.li as an Alternative to Google Reader [Screencast]
To find good content online, I find that I’m going less and less to Google Reader and more to sources like Paper.li, an automated content curation tool that filters out some of the content noise. The problem with Google Reader is lack of content curation. You get a ton of noise, regardless of how fine-tuned your list of feeds are. With tools such as paper.li, which rank the most shared links on Twitter (based on a user’s followers, a hashtag, or a list), you can filter out the first layer of noise and more quickly find relevant content.
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I once referred to paper.li as “birdcage liner.” I hereby retract that statement. As you’ve demonstrated, it’s a surprisingly good tool for sifting out content that’s worthwhile — with the potential to become a highly effective tool for curation.
Because it emphasizes the most talked-about content, it reflects the wisdom of the crowd — a topic that you wrote about in your “Organizing content” series. I’m still not convinced that the crowd is always the best way to determine what’s good and what isn’t. But as paper.li shows, it’s powerful.
I’ve subscribed to Paper.li for a few weeks now and it just doesn’t even come close to my Google Reader feed. Problem is that I just don’t want the big stories or the most popular stories that my Twitter followers are tweeting. I can get my ‘niche’ news best in my rss feed.
You’re right that there is a lot of noise to sift through but Google Reader Filter, which works in Firefox and Chrome, can help filter out some of the keywords you’re not interested in. I’ve blogged about finding news and sharing links recently and tried to explain my thinking there:
http://www.techandlife.com/2010/10/finding-stories-and-sharing-links-what-works-for-you/
Incidentally, I found this post through Lazyfeed: one of the keywords I’m searching on just now is filtering!