FeedMagnet Turns One!

A year ago, FeedMagnet was just a concept with a lot of potential, but nothing to show for it. We've come a long way since then, and we thought we should mark the moment by bringing everyone up to speed on the whirlwind that has been this past year for us.

by Jason Ford on Sep. 13, 2010

We are the Powerpoint of social media

Back in the day, there wasn't a suite of tools called Microsoft Office. There were just word processors, spreadsheets, and other stand-alone business tools. Eventually the tools were packaged and sold as a unit. Microsoft Office, iWork, Google Docs, etc.

At some point social media tools will be packaged in a similar way, but right now we are still in the era of stand-alone tools: HooteSuite, CoTweet, Spredfast, Radian6, etc. Each tool has a specific purpose and function. FeedMagnet is one of the first in a new category of tools. In our analogy, we are the Powerpoint (we actually prefer Keynote, but you get the idea) of social media.

by Jason Ford on Jul. 23, 2010

Geodata: Where is everybody?

Sometimes where someone is can be just as important as what they are doing or saying. Many of our social media sources, including Flickr and Twitter, provide geodata (latitude and longitude) for updates, letting you know where the photo or tweet was recorded. With our latest updates, FeedMagnet now knows what to do with that data.

In addition to tracking check-ins from Gowalla and Foursquare, we're storing geodata given to us from Flickr, Twitter, and other sources. Its up to you how the location information gets displayed. It can be displayed in text form (e.g. "in Austin, TX") or by plotting updates on a map.

by Jason Ford on Jun. 29, 2010

Gowalla & Foursquare

One of the benefits of software-as-a-service—in addition to not having to maintain servers and continually purchase upgrades—is the continual rollout of new features. For FeedMagnet, many of those new features come in the form of new content sources, and our two new ones are the fun, location-based, Gowalla and Foursquare.

by Jason Ford on Jun. 15, 2010

Another new source: Tumblr

You've been able to pull blogs into FeedMagnet since the beginning—really anything that has an RSS feed can be pulled in. The trouble with Tumblr is that it is often much more than blog content. In addition to several text update formats, Tumblr lets you post photo, video, and audio updates.

Our latest integration lets you add Tumblr sources natively rather than through RSS—which means we recognize all of those different Tumblr sources and handle them appropriately. The end result is a better looking FeedMagnet output when Tumblr is involved.

by Jason Ford on Jun. 7, 2010