Facebook Privacy

Facebook Home – Addressing Privacy Concerns – Official Responses

Last week, Facebook announced Facebook Home , software which will make Android devices put the social network front and center, essentially turning a variety of smartphones into the long-rumored “Facebook phone.” Matters of privacy quickly became a focus of attention as GigaOm’s Om Malik and others questioned the possibility of increased access to personal information the social network’s new software would provide.

“Home doesn’t change anything related to your privacy settings on Facebook, and your privacy controls work the same with Home as they do everywhere else on Facebook,” according to blog post by Facebook staff addressing the concerns.

So, it’s the same, only different … right? Not entirely. Since Home does take over your Android phone, it also gains access to some things which hadn’t been previously touched by the social network.

“For example, Facebook maintains a list of the apps that you have in the Home app launcher,” the social network’s blog post offers. “Facebook could see that you launched a map application using the app launcher, but Facebook would not receive information about what directions you searched for or any other activity within the app itself.”

In the case of devices which come with Home preinstalled — the HTC First is the, well, first of these devices — Home is also able to display system notifications. This means further there are further details to take into consideration. “Since these notifications appear in Home, Facebook collects information about the notification (such as which app is generating them) but not the content of the notification itself,” Facebook’s Home FAQ page breaks down. Like the app information, these details are personally identifiable for 90 days. Then they are anonymized.

“We use this information for diagnostic purposes and to learn more about how people use our products so we can make improvements in the future,” a Facebook spokesperson clarified to NBC News. “For some of the system notifications, we need this information so we can serve the experience to users.” In plainer terms: How on earth can Facebook Home show you notifications unless it knows what the notifications are about.

Not all critics are placated by the explanation, however. Ars Technica speculated, “that while Home may not use location data any differently (than the Facebook app), it certainly has more opportunities to collect it.”

It’s not possible to opt out of having information collected for these purposes. If you want Facebook to delete whatever it has collected from you right away, you’d have to delete your Facebook account. If you just want to get rid of Facebook Home or some features, you can play around in its settings or uninstall it entirely.

via nbcnews

NCAA Social Media

Viewership And Social Media Help March Madness Beat The Super Bowl In Ad Revenue Generation

The exciting 67 games spread across the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament are enough to bring weeks of joy to any college basketball fan. The same can likely be said for companies, whose marketing potential is greatly expanded during the course of March Madness as a result of the event’s significant viewership numbers.

When it comes to sporting events, March Madness may best be described as the “Super Bowl” of college sports. According to the NCAA, 181 million viewers tune in throughout the tournament across television, online and out-of-home platforms. 149 million people view the tournament via in-home television. That number exceeds the in-home viewership numbers of the five BCS bowl games combined, which reach 80 million in-home television viewers. Given these numbers, there is no shortage of advertisers salivating at the chance to have their product showcased during March Madness.

In addition to reaching hundreds of millions of viewers, March Madness’ particular target audience makes investing in ad space during the tournament more attractive to certain companies than others. 42 percent of all adults who watch the tournament on television are men between the ages of 25 and 54. This statistic motivated companies like Unilever Skincare to develop advertising campaigns specifically targeted at reaching this audience. “We know that men ages 25-54 are 57 percent more likely to watch the tournament than the average adult, which is why the tournament remains such an effective platform for us—we can connect with men in a hyper-relevant fashion with content that resonates,” said Unilever Skincare’s vice president of marketing, Rob Candelino.

Along with a wide television viewership opportunity, March Madness presents advertisers with the possibility of making a significant digital impact. According to the NCAA, 7.7 million social media comments about the tournament are made during telecasts. This social media dialogue extends beyond the game, to discussions about the NCAA’s March Madness corporate partners. The NCAA reports that there are 1.5 billion online conversations that occur about corporate partners throughout the tournament.

Seeing the possibility to gain an even greater reach through social media impressions, companies like Unilever Skincare integrated social media campaigns around their March Madness advertising. “Guys can engage with our NCAA relevant ‘Real Moments’ campaign across our Twitter, Facebook and Youtube channels, as well as through digital and mobile platforms. Our NCAA partnership helps our brands connect with men when they are plugged into and engaged in tournament action,” Candelino said.

With the perks corporations gain from March Madness advertising, it’s arguably not surprising that corporations spend more these days on March Madness ad buys than Super Bowl ad buys. According to Kantar Media , 266 different marketers have spent more than $5.9 billion on advertising during March Madness over the last decade. The biggest ad spend was seen during last year’s tournament, when advertisers spent just over $1 billion. This year’s Super Bowl raked in $976.3 million in advertising revenue. The social media reach of March Madness is arguably driving the increase in ad spends during March Madness, as ad spending has increased by 64 percent over the last two years.

Over the next few years, it will be worth watching to see if this March Madness ad spending trend continues. With the influx of social media over wider audiences, corporations will likely continue to see an increasing value in March Madness advertising. As such, the NCAA and its broadcasting partner, CBS, likely will see no limit to their advertising revenue generating potential.

via forbes

Social Graffiti

Gangs move between streets and social media

For monitoring gang activity, police have a free intelligence-gathering tool at their disposal: social media. This is just one example from Newport Virginia.

“The graffiti of old is now Facebook,” said Sgt. L.W. Spencer, who leads the gang enforcement unit at Newport Police Department. “They’re trying to portray a certain image in everything that they’re doing on Facebook.”

The communication and activities that play out on the streets have been extended to the Internet and sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, said Executive Director George Knox of the National Gang Crime Research Center, which supplies research to police. Gangs have long maintained a presence on the Internet, and the popularity of smartphones just makes it easier.

“From the perspective of police investigators, this is an intelligence gold mine because this is open source information,” Knox said. “It’s due diligence for any police department to take that stuff seriously.”

For instance, police made connections between several of the “Dump Squad” gang members in Newport News from a rap video they produced and released on YouTube more than two years ago, Spencer said, watching the video and pointing to the young men that were arrested. Group photos on Facebook show youth displaying gang hand signs and wearing gang colors or other symbols. Young people use Twitter like “walkie talkies” to alert each other to police presence in the area, Spencer said.

In April 2011, 11 men were charged in federal court with different gang-related crimes as members would identify their West Coast Bloods affiliation through Twitter, Facebook and MySpace photos, videos and posts, according to the indictment. The accused members of the Portsmouth-based gang have since been found guilty on various counts, with one man sentenced to life in prison on two counts of murder, according to online court records.

But social media alone doesn’t finish the investigation, as police have to corroborate and confirm any information, Spencer said. To use Facebook information in court, police also need to file search warrants.

“That’s just a piece of the puzzle,” said Sgt. Jason Price, a spokesman for the Hampton Police Division. “It just confirms what we already know.”

Newport News has about 60 active gangs, Spencer said. Hampton has about 10, said Sgt. Derrick Woolaston, supervisor of the police gang unit in Hampton.

The gangs may be as few as three people and are usually a neighborhood group claiming affiliation with either the Bloods or Crips, Spencer said. Often, police aren’t dealing with rival gang fighting so much as infighting, Spencer explained. However, what makes it difficult to accurately tally the number of Peninsula gangs, comprised mostly of youth, is that members switch from one gang to another, and even to supposedly rival gangs, Spencer said.

This is evident in Newport News police seeing more “amateur-like” graffiti combining symbols, Spencer said. Hampton is seeing less “tagging” and the graffiti there is also filled with mistakes, Woolaston said. Local gangs aren’t organized as portrayed on TV, and youth will join and switch gangs for acceptance or protection, Woolaston explained.

“There’s less criminality and more socialization,” Woolaston said, adding Hampton police are seeing fewer gang-related crimes compared to five years ago.

Youth continue to be influenced by the glamorization of the gang lifestyle as it appears in movies and music, police said.

The people committing the crimes would do so whether they were in a gang or not, Woolaston explained. Even so, proving gang affiliation in court can tack on more time for sentencing and make it easier for police to prosecute a gang’s future criminal activities, police said. Spencer said the streets in Newport News are safer than 15 years ago although police continue to monitor gang hot spots in the Southeast community, like 23rd and Chestnut Avenue, and 33rd Street and Roanoke Avenue.

As far as how gang members use social media, each person or gang member is different. Spencer said youth seem to use it to portray an image of “money, power and respect,” although some use it as an intimidation tool. Knox said gang members will post or message witnesses to keep them from testifying. Spencer said he hasn’t heard of gangs recruiting through social media in Newport News, although Knox said this happens across the country. In 2008, Hampton police charged a 15-year-old boy with making gang threats and recruitment of persons for a criminal street gang through MySpace.

Spencer advises parents to know what their kids are doing online, to pay attention to who “friends” them on Facebook and to be wary when their children don’t accept their friendship.

 via dailypress

Tonight Show Hosts

How Social Media Propelled Fallon’s Tonight Show Take-Over

Comedians Jimmy Fallon and Jay Leno arrive in the press room at the Golden Globes awards ceremony in Beverly Hills on January 13, 2013.

As news began to surface this week that a promotion was in the works, Jimmy Fallon read through a series of tweets on-air at Late Night. The tweets were part of his recurring bit themed around a particular hashtag — in this case,  #WhyDontTheyMa keThat . (A personal favorite: A ‘nobody cares’ button on Facebook ).

Ideas like Late Night Hashtags demonstrate Fallon’s unrivaled ability to connect with fans to create show material. His rise to the top of late-night offers a lesson for those expecting to make it in the content business: If you can’t find ways to engage people in program creation, you might be dismissed for someone who can.

Ed Bark at CNN suggests that Twitter was the ace card that propelled Fallon into The Tonight Show chair, adding:

“…if this indeed is Fallon’s time, it may be in large part because we live in very different times. The Internet-driven “social media” didn’t exist during Carson’s storied 30-year reign. He simply had to deliver a conventional TV audience. He did so year after year against a variety of competitors in a much less crowded late-night field.”

If you look closer, Fallon’s rise is not only about Twitter, and goes beyond using social media tactics to amass a fan base. In Fallon’s case, similar to Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel, contributions from fans are core to their creative strategy. Social currency is baked directly into the material.

Is the late-night format dead as Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post now suggests? In a sense, yes – the standalone, traditional model is no longer viable. But is that new? Fallon and his late-night contemporaries have optimized content for social engagement for years. They produce show material in multiple formats. They distribute content across many platforms. Because it’s good, their content shared widely across social networks. Tune-in may not sustain the franchise. NBC is betting multiplatform distribution and access to compelling content will.

Which brings us back to the product itself. Every week, Fallon challenges his eight million followers to come up with ideas based on games he creates (e.g., #howigotfired, #awkwarddate). These bits become global trending topics, some as quickly as in twelve minutes .

Think about that approach in contrast to Leno’s world and the previous generation of late-night ringleaders. Audiences like to engage with the hosts of programs they watch, and have easy means to do so. To meet that demand, NBC has elevated the socially-savviest of them all, one who surely bring a fresh, contemporary style to The Tonight Show.

via Forbes – Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Mark Sanford

The Social Media #Fail of the Mark Sanford Race

The GOP primary in South Carolina’s first congressional district was almost completely unsurprising. Pundits expected Mark Sanford to ride name recognition into a runoff berth, then to have the advantage in the runoff itself. He did. The only surprise along the way was the defeat of State Sen. Larry Grooms at the hands of Curtis Bostic, a social conservative who edged him for the right to go mano-a-mano contra Sanford.

The only botched prediction I could find, really, was this one.

An independent analysis by political observer Laughton Chandler has predicted a GOP winner of Tuesday’s runoff election: Curtis Bostic.

The prediction was made by analyzing social media. According to the data, Bostic will win with more than 55 percent of the vote. His rival would earn more than 44 percent of the vote.

What in the what? The actual result was 25 points off that: Sanford 57, Bostic 43. Why was a “social media analysis” so wrong?

Simple: The Bostic campaign bet late on social media without really understanding its relevance. In the short two-week stretch of the runoff, the campaign hired roving new media guru Ali Akbar to beef up its presence. Akbar bought the web domain “TrustCurtis.com,” and hashtagged the slogan. Rick Santorum, whose PAC has co-sponsored Akbar’s CPAC “Blog Bash” parties for two years running, flew down to South Carolina for one day of campaign events with Bostic. On Twitter, certainly, mentions of Bostic surged from nothing to something. ViralRead.com, a news site co-founded by Akbar in 2012, became a one-stop shop for #SC01 news, with a jaundiced view of Sanford.

Sanford’s allies responded with LOLs. Wes Donohue, a media strategist for Sanford, repeatedly mocked the Bostic strategy with tweets. “#trustcurtis to hire the same bloggers who were paid to smear Mitt Romney,” he wrote. ”#trustbostic to fund an out-of-state blogger to smear a South Carolinian.”

The Sanfordites didn’t really understand the play. The April 2 election was going to be low-turnout. In 2010, for example, the runoff that started Tim Scott’s ascent to Congress saw 68,000 votes cast. The April 2 election turnout was around 47,000. What difference did it make if bloggers outside the district suddenly cared about Bostic?

“This campaign needed delegation and a solid field plan if they didn’t have the funds to build rapid name-ID against a candidate with negative name recognition,” Akbar told me this morning, before heading back home from the district. “The Bostic campaign had neither. But it did have a candidate of extreme integrity. If we had one more week, we could’ve got in on fate and momentum.”

via slate.com

SEC Twitter Facebook

SEC clears up ‘confusion’ over social media rules

Companies can use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to unveil key information about their operations as long as they’ve told investors where to look for it, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday.

The decision averts a showdown between the SEC and Netflix. The Internet video streaming service got into trouble with the agency last year after chief executive Reed Hastings used his personal Facebook account to boast that his company had streamed more than 1 billion hours of content in June.
The SEC told Netflix that the July posting may have run afoul of a rule that requires companies to distribute important information broadly to the public, and avoid feeding it to a select group of shareholders who could trade on it ahead of other investors.

When the SEC warned that Netflix may face enforcement action, the agency was widely mocked as a plodding regulator unable to keep up with evolving technology.

The SEC said that its disclosure rule allows for such changes.

In 2008, the agency determined that companies can use Web sites to distribute material information as long as they’ve alerted investors that the sites would be used for the purpose. On Tuesday, the SEC issued guidance making it clear that the same principles apply to social media.

“Most social media are perfectly suitable methods for communicating with investors, but not if the access is restricted or if investors don’t know that’s where they need to turn to get the latest news,” George Canellos, acting director of the SEC’s enforcement division, said in a statement.

The SEC said it came to realize during the Netflix investigation that there was confusion about how the fair-disclosure rules apply to social media, so it decided not take legal action against Netflix.

But it also pointed out that Hastings had not previously used his Facebook page to announce company news, and Netflix never notified investors that Hastings’ personal Facebook page might be used to disseminate information about the company.

In a company filing, Hastings had said that the information he relayed on Facebook was not “material.” But the SEC suggested that it was, citing a rise in the share price, which jumped from $70.45 at the time of the Facebook posting to $81.72 at the close of trading the following day.

A Netflix spokesman said the company appreciated “the SEC’s careful consideration and resolution of this matter.”

Eugene Goldman, a former senior counsel in the SEC’s enforcement division, said in a statement that the SEC had cleared up the confusion about the use of social media. “Next time material information is disclosed on an executive’s Facebook page without the company alerting all shareholders to look there for information, the matter will likely be met with an SEC lawsuit,” said Goldman, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery.

via washingtonpost.com

Facebook Car

Top Tips from Social Media Award Winning Auto Dealers

Most dealerships are learning the hard way that there is more to success online than simply getting people to “like” you on Facebook. If your social media strategy isn’t engaging or interesting to your target, it will get “blocked” or “disliked” pretty quickly.

Dealerships need to find unexpected and engaging ways to get audiences involved with their business. Only the campaigns that drive loyalty and interest will start to take on a life of their own and become successful social media campaigns. Here are some creative campaign ideas you can try from just a few of the 2012 Automotive Social Media Award-winning dealers…

Rich Ford’s “New Year’s Resolution Campaign,” which won the Most Creative Facebook Ad Campaign Award, took advantage of the New Year by challenging their Facebook fans to come up with the most compelling way that a 500 dollar gift card would help them realize their New Year’s resolutions. Submissions by Facebook fans were then voted on by other Facebook users, and the entry that got the most “likes” won the gift card. The contest was heavily promoted in the local market with Facebook Ads. This campaign drove 687 new “likes” and had a viral reach of 272,300.

Tempe Chrysler Dodge Jeep, winner of the Best Facebook Contest & Ad Campaign Award, gave away four VIP tickets to the Phoenix Open and also donated 10 dollars for every new Facebook Liker to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. The three week contest was promoted heavily in the local market using Facebook Ads and Sponsored Posts. This campaign increased liker count by 1308 and Tempe was able to collect 1081 in market leads that included email addresses. They had an amazing 6,340 clicks with a 61 percent custom audience match rate. The numbers speak for themselves!

Having a solid strategy for reputation management is also a big part of social media marketing. A study of more than 1,600 car buyers and 600 dealerships found that nearly 70 percent of recent car buyers said review sites influenced where they shopped. Many buyers were also willing to drive long distances to purchase vehicles from dealers with positive reviews. Your dealership’s reputation is crucial to driving sales and loyalty. Norm Reeves Honda, winner of the Best Online Reputation Award, is a high-volume dealer located in Cerritos, CA (LA metro area). They have done an outstanding job generating high volumes of positive reviews nicely distributed across the most important review sites in their market, and they are benefitting from significant traffic to their website. How did they do it? They started tracking customer reviews just like they do sales and challenged their staff to get their happy customers to go online and leave reviews. They also regularly survey their customers to fix any issues and ensure excellent service. Norm Reeves Honda generated 305 positive reviews, well distributed across the top five sites* with a 4.4 star average for 2012 which resulted in 2470 website referrals from these top 5 review sites.

It is hard for dealerships to stand-out in social media, but creative campaigns and a great online reputation can improve customer loyalty and generate more leads and sales.

view the whole article on dealermarketing.com

Equality For All

How Social Media Can Cause Social Change

You have no doubt seen the Human Rights Campaign’s new red and pink equal sign avatar that is sweeping through Facebook this week as well as pictures and status updates affirming support for same-sex marriage. But what does it all mean? Why does it matter?

Social media can be petty and frivolous; it can be a drain on time and fuel jealousy. But, when it comes to politics, social media serves as a powerful echo-chamber that can shape views on candidates and issues alike. In this sense, it is not much different from conversations with friends, family and co-workers around the dinner table or the office water cooler. When a Facebook user sees his or her news feed is filled with pronouncements of support for same-sex marriage, that may lead to one of the following outcomes:

1) A user who already supports same-sex marriage may be inspired to adopt an equal sign avatar or share a supportive image or status update. This leads to a chain reaction — everyone’s doing it and no one who supports gay marriage wants to be mistaken for an opponent or a hater.

2) A user who is undecided or opposed to same-sex marriage may be led to reevaluate his or her beliefs. Seeing that one’s grandchildren, fellow churchgoers, or respected friends from college visibly support gay marriage can cause people to think something along the lines of, “These people whom I love, trust and admire support gay marriage. I should too.”

Companies value Facebook because when users like something on the site — be it a hotel, a website, a book or a type of soda — their Facebook friends can see this, making likes tantamount to word of mouth endorsements. A Nielsen poll of 25,000 internet consumers showed that 90 percent of respondents said that they “completely” or “somewhat” trusted recommendations from friends or acquaintances. This is much higher than those who trusted TV ads (62 percent), newspaper ads (59 percent), e-mails (54 percent), and online banner ads (33 percent). On Facebook, issues like same-sex marriage and political candidates are similar to products and brands. Changing one’s profile picture to the pink and red equal sign or posting messages supporting gay marriage is tantamount to a word of mouth endorsement.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 38 percent of social networking service users “have discovered through a friend’s posts that his/her political beliefs were different than the user thought they were” and that 16 percent “say they have changed their views about a political issue after discussing or reading posts about” on social networks. Facebook affords us the ability to learn what our friends think about the issues of the day, views that may not come out in the course of ordinary in-person conversation. But, more importantly, what we learn on Facebook can cause us to reexamine and change our own views and lead to social change in our country. The equal sign on Facebook is not just a statement of solidarity — it can shape the views of others and change our political discourse.

view the full post on huffingtonpost.com

Is Feedly the savior Google Reader users need?

What makes us the most optimistic about Feedly is the fact that its founder seems dead-set on winning users over. Edwin Khodabakchian and his team are working overtime to improve Feedly across all platforms. They’re actively soliciting feedback and implementing changes to make the service meet users’ needs. Yup — they’re actually listening to the people who use their product. That kind of passion and commitment is something we never saw Google apply to Reader. Reader was great but neglected; Feedly is good and growing fast.

Just this week, Feedly announced a new version of its Web-based application .The update provides a simpler, more visually pleasing interface; more control over the look of your feeds; and a denser, cleaner list view of stories that aims to “make the transition from the Google Reader list view … as seamless as possible.”

Here’s what’s really interesting: I’m actually finding that Feedly is moving beyond the point of merely catching up with Reader. It’s starting to surpass it.

The new Feedly Web app is a joy to use. It’s like a sleeker, more polished version of Reader with several new bells and whistles thrown in. (One such example: If your browser window is small, the left-side navigation panel automatically transforms into a floating menu that appears only when you mouse over it, thereby leaving more space for the actual content of your feeds.) It feels like what Reader could have been if Google hadn’t given up on it years ago.

Feedly’s progress isn’t just limited to the desktop, either. I’ve been testing out a beta version of the company’s upcoming update to its Android app , and let me tell you: It’s good. Really good. The app features a new text-centric list view of stories along with improved search and a handful of other UI and function-oriented improvements. It’s right up there with the top Reader apps available on Android today.

I’ve also discovered some useful gestures that hadn’t previously caught my eye — things like the ability to short-swipe on a story in list view to mark it as read or long-swipe to mark all visible stories as read. Again, it feels like what Google’s own Reader app could have been if its development hadn’t stagnated.

Of course, Google Reader was more than just a website and app; it was an ecosystem that numerous third-party programs relied upon to provide their own mobile experiences. Popular Android apps like Press and Reader HD — and, heck, even Feedly — use Google Reader’s API to sync feeds and keep track of what you’ve read across multiple devices and platforms.

Feedly, as you’ve probably heard, is working on its own “clone” of the Google Reader API — the interface that allows other apps to tap into the ecosystem — and plans to flip the switch on it once Reader shuts down this July. Feedly’s creators say they’ll open the API up to third-party developers, which means — if everything goes as planned — all of those apps should be able to start using Feedly as a universal syncing solution.

Oh, and one more thing: Feedly is working on a pro version of its product for “people who want more control.” In other words: monetization — you know, the thing that keeps a company in business.

It’s too soon to point to any one service as the heir apparent to Google Reader, but Feedly is positioning itself wisely to inherit the throne. And the fact that there are still other players out there is a good thing; it means each contender has to fight to win us over and keep innovating to avoid getting left behind.

Regardless of how things shake out, Feedly’s impressive evolution has me feeling confident that the future of RSS-driven news reading is far less bleak than it initially seemed. Only time will tell what broader implications the shutdown of Reader might have on the Web, but in terms of end-user experience, things are moving beyond stable and actually looking exciting for the first time in years.

view the full article over at computerworld.

46 Google Reader Alternatives

Google Reader Alternatives

Feedly – Meet feedly. The better way to organize, read and share the content of your favorite sites.

NewsBlur – NewsBlur is a personal news reader bringing people together to talk about the world.

Bloglovin – Bloglovin’ helps you follow the blogs you read by letting you know when they update.

The Old Reader – Welcome to The Old Reader, the ultimate social RSS reader. It’s just like the old google reader, only better.

Bloglines – Welcome to the all new Bloglines, the best resource for local blogs, news, and events.

Tiny Tiny RSS – Tiny Tiny RSS is an open source web-based news feed (RSS/Atom) reader and aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible.

Pulse – Pulse is a fast and beautiful way to read your favorite blogs, magazines, social networks and newspapers.

Flipboard – Your social magazine. See everything on Flipboard, all your news and life’s great moments in one place.

Fever – Your current feed reader is full of unread items. You’re hesitant to subscribe to any more feeds because you can’t keep up with your existing subs. Maybe you’ve even abandoned feeds altogether. Fever takes the temperature of your slice of the web and shows you what’s hot.

wavii – Know what’s happening in the world and share your thoughts. Start now.

Skim.Me – A visual feed prioritized by how much time you have & what you’re in the mood for. See what’s new from the stuff you check or entertain yourself with other interesting things.

selfoss – The new multipurpose rss reader, live stream, mashup, aggregation web application.

Netvibes – Everything that matters to you, all in one dashboard

PlayerFM – Listen to talk shows on hundreds of topics, everything from Politics to Pokemon! Sign up to save your favorites and build your own channel. it’s free and easy.

1kpl.us – This is an RSS and Atom feed reader. Use it to subscribe to your favorite sites, and share and discuss news with friends.

Prismatic – Connect to create a newsfeed based on your interests.

BazQux Reader – RSS reader that shows comments to posts.

News Maven – Rockin’ RSS for News Addicts.

dotdotdot – Your place for long-form reading. Make the most out of digital reading.

Intigi – Accelerate your Content Marketing. Quickly find and share the most valuable content in one easy-to-use platform.

memamsa – memamsa uses RSS/Atom feeds and twitter accounts/lists to keep you updated on topics of interest.

msgboy – A live stream of the stories you want.

Feedbin – A fast, simple RSS feed reader that delivers a great reading experience. $2/mo.

Feedspot – We are Rethinking the RSS Reader and building an entirely new platform from scratch.

newsbeuter – Newsbeuter is an open-source RSS/Atom feed reader for text terminals. Newsbeuter’s great configurability and vast number of features make it a perfect choice for people that need a slick and fast feed reader that can be completely controlled via keyboard.

Mozilla Thunderbird – Most people don’t know, but Thunderbird can reed RSS feeds!

BlogrollApp – An early-stage online RSS reader.

RSSOwl – RSSOwl is a free and powerful news feed reader. RSSOwl lets you gather, organize and search news in a convenient, easy to use interface with endless flexibility.

backstitch – backstitch makes your personal web beautiful and connected.

Zite – Discover your Interesting. Whether you like fashion, football, painting, or politics, Zite has all your interests in one place.

Fireplug – Get credit for what you read.

Liferea – Liferea, the free news aggregator on your Linux desktop.

Bookmarkchamp – What should have been done for bookmarking a long time ago.

My Yahoo! – The Big Purple can aggregate your feeds.

NetNewsWire – More news. Less junk. Faster.

Nuesbyte – A highly compact, infinite scrolling way to browse RSS feeds.

Frontpage – Social. News. Now. Browse News and Social feeds from your Lock Screen. And its all 100% free!

IFTTT – IFTTT is a service that lets you create powerful connections with one simple statement.

Viafeeds – Reliable, awesome news feed app. Hear that Google Reader is shutting down this Summer? We’ve been building a replacement that will be ready in a couple months.

Android Rivers – Fast River of News style RSS reader.

Pheedr – Minimalist RSS Reader

SkimFeed – Tech News Aggregator. Skimfeed linked from superfeedr and femgeek, fast paced long article!

RSS2Email – A free, open-source tool for Windows and UNIX for getting news from RSS feeds in email. Created by the late Aaron Swartz.

Rssminer – Yet another free RSS reader.

Sunstroke – Sunstroke is the first iPhone and iPod touch app designed to work with Shaun Inman’s Fever self-hosted RSS reader. Sunstroke syncs with your current installation of Fever and gives you full access to all of your feeds, hot links, and saved items.

protopage – Protopage is your own personal page, which you can access from any computer or mobile phone. Use it to read your own selection of news and blogs, keep bookmarks, to-do lists, sticky notes, and much more.

What do you like? What do you hate? What is missing from the list?