Web Community Shares News and Blog Feeds

People that rely on RSS news feeds to track information on the Internet understand the inherent value in automated news collecting: Instead of visiting each Web site you follow to see if it has been updated, you let your news reader application notify you of updates complete with story synopsis.

Taking the concept a step further, you can glean additional information from the people that subscribe to specific RSS feeds. Share Your OPML attempts to do just that by giving you an easy way to add your list watched RSS feeds to a growing online database.

For the uninitiated, RSS is a data format used to syndicate information from Web site and blogs. Users subscribe to the syndicated feed with a news reader application like NewsMac Pro, NetNewsWire, and even Safari. OPML is a format commonly used to exchange lists of RSS feeds.

For example, TMO offers several RSS feeds. The main headline feed is available at this URL. If you subscribe to the RSS feed, thatis the URL that your news reader application uses to look for new stories. If you export you list of feeds to share with others, the OPML file will include that URL as well.

Share Your OPML leverages that information for you, letting you track who is interested in the same types of Web sites as you, and find additional sites that may have information you are interested in. If you have an RSS feed associated with your site or blog, you can also see who is reading your content.

The Web site FAQ offers a nice explanation, too: "The purpose of this site is to gather a community of subscription lists, in OPML format, and aggregate them in interesting ways."

TMO hasnit extensively tested Share Your OPML, but it looks like an interesting way to track your own RSS feeds, and find other Web sites that may interest you.