Thursday, June 21, 2007

So you want buzz, eh? Do it in style with del.icio.us, pipes, and widgets

It seems buzz is all the buzz these days.

If you don't want to be left behind in this day and age of blogs, mashups, rss, widgets, ajax and yes, even comets, you've come to the right place to generate some buzz, and you won't even need a full-time intern to do it!

Today I am going to show you how to put together a complete buzz generating engine, in just three simple steps, that is fully distributed and collaborative, but more importantly is completely web 2.0 and buzzword compliant. Sound good? Good. :)

So here we go. Before we start, let's ground this exercise in something concrete. Imagine a marketing droid has come to you with the preceding two paragraphs, and you need to understand what in the heck he actually means.

If you page on over to www.terracotta.org, scroll on down past all the stuff about Terracotta, and have a look at the section marked "Terracotta Buzz". Ok, I understand you're a bit lazy with the ol' mouse click, so I've included a screenshot to the right for your convenience. It says "Terracotta Buzz" and then a list of links. What the marketing droid wants is:

  • A dynamic list of links, kept up to date
  • Relevant content, not just random links (try searching for Terracotta, you'll see the term is a bit generic so it can be difficult to discern real buzz from somebody's trip to China)


What you want, because you don't have any spare time in your day, is a process that:
  • Is easy to maintain, requiring no intervention on your part
  • Is up-to-date (what good is buzz if it's not up to date?)
  • Is distributed and collaborative (you won't be the only person contributing, that way you can get on with your life)


Got it?  Ok here we go.   Three easy steps.  I wouldn't lie to you, now would I?

Step 1 - Add the Widget to your page


On your buzz page, setup an RSS widget that reads an RSS feed. When users browse your site, the RSS widget reads the RSS feed and gives them the most up to date info.  Did you notice the Terracotta Buzz on the right of my blog?  That's an RSS widget BlogSpot gives you, putting it on your blog page is trivial.  

Step 2 - create a Yahoo pipe


Set up a Yahoo account and create a Yahoo pipe that aggregates RSS feeds from delicious users that are going to generate the buzz for you. Here's the Terracotta Buzz Pipe.

It's the heart of this process, so I'll explain what it does:
  • Aggregate content from various sources, including delicious accounts of contributors to Terracotta, RSS feeds from people that blog about Terracotta (like myself)
  • Remove duplicate entries
  • Publish one aggregate feed as the result


Step 3 - Tag links using del.icio.us


After creating the Yahoo Pipe to aggregate del.icio.us links, now all you have to do is populate those links.  As the tagger, you want to create a unique set of tags that can be used in the Yahoo!  Pipe feed to pull in just the Buzz links.  I use the special tag "forterracotta", which you can see by browsing my links here:
That is all there is to it.  There's an optional step to burn your feed using Feedburner which adds an extra level of abstraction above the Yahoo! Pipes feed, and gives you the ability to track subsribers.  It's a nice touch, but not strictly necessary.

Summary


Putting it all together, here is the complete diagram of the process:

6 comments:

Jim Bethancourt said...

Hi Taylor,
Also worth mentioning is Feedroll -- http://www.feedroll.com
It generates a Javascript tag from the RSS feed you give it, and then you can post the tag your website and it spits out the RSS feed for you. Using it along with Yahoo Pipes works great to display multiple aggregated RSS feeds on a webpage sidebar. Unfortunately when their server goes down so does the webpage feed (as I just discovered) and they also have a "Powered by Feedroll" link at the bottom. Other than that, it works great.

Taylor said...

Thanks Jim. I'm checking it out now...

Taylor said...

ouch.....they look like they got overused:

"This account has been suspended.
Either the domain has been overused, or the reseller ran out of resources."

Jim Bethancourt said...

Wow! Gone from broken to broke in a day? Who knows... They didn't seem to have any real revenue stream that I could tell except for having a "professional" version -- it was free to use otherwise.

Anonymous said...

(法新社a倫敦二B十WE四日電) 「情色二零零七」情趣產品大產自二十三日起在倫敦的肯辛頓奧林匹亞展覽館舉成人電影行,倫敦成人電影人擺脫對性的保守態度踴躍參觀,許多穿皮衣與塑膠緊身衣的好色之徒擠進這項成人網站世界規模最大的成人生活展,估計三天展期可吸引八萬多好奇民眾參觀。色情

活動計畫負責人a片下載米里根承諾:「要搞浪漫、誘惑人、玩虐待,你渴望的我們都有。」
成人網站
他說:「時髦的設計成人影片與華麗女裝,從吊飾到束腹到真人大小的雕塑,是我們由a片今年展出的數千件產品精av選出的一部分,A片下載參展產品還包括時尚服飾、貼身女用內在美、鞋子、珠寶、玩具、影片、藝術av女優成人影片圖書及遊戲,更不要說性愛輔具及馬術裝備。」
色情
參觀民眾遊覽情色電影A片百五十多個攤位,有性感服AV裝、玩具a片及情色食品,迎合各種品味。

情色大舞台上表演的是美國野蠻搖滾歌手瑪莉蓮曼森的前妻─情色電影全世色情影片界頭牌脫衣舞孃黛塔范提思,這是她今年在英情色國唯一一場表演。

以一九四零年代風格演出的黛塔范提思表演性感的天堂鳥、旋轉木馬及羽扇等舞蹈AV女優

參展攤位有的推廣情趣用品,有的公開展示人體藝術和人體雕塑,也有情色藝術家工會成員提供建議。

Anonymous said...

池袋 風俗
渋谷 風俗
新宿 風俗
アダルトDVD
av 写真
アダルト ブルーレイ
アンドロペニス
オナホール
コンドーム
ローション
SM 通販
メンズセクシー下着
男性用下着
Tバック下着
大規模修繕
決済代行
SEO
SEO
花植物大図鑑
決済代行
FX 初心者
クレジットカード 申込
子猫
子犬
仔猫
アダルトショップ
アダルトグッツ
ゴールドカード年会費
ダッチワイフ