How can I make an RSS-like feed that is publishable by the public?

August 5, 2007 4:48 PM

How can I make an rss-like feed that is publishable by the public? Maybe there's a better way to do this, but here's what I'd like the end result to look like

Ideally, I'd like to have a subscribe-able public feed that can be published by anyone interested in a very niche topic. It would be a one-way type communication where the publisher would post tiny news items to a feed, but no dialog would occur between publishers of the "news" items... It might be similar to Twitter, where there's small one-line items, but they would include html links. No login or registration should be required, as I'd like publishers to remain anonymous if they'd like. Maybe it could be a webpage where the anonymous comments would then go out into a feed? Does this make sense, and how might I be able to do it? Thanks!

posted by itchi23 to computers & internet (3 answers total)

Can you describe how this is different from a blog that doesn't require registration? That's all you seem to have described, as far as I can tell.
posted by dmd at 5:27 PM on August 5, 2007

There are lots of ways to do this. Probably the first was Topic Exchange. I have a friend who has rolled his own system for blog entries on our local community. You could use Technorati tags and have everyone tag blog posts with an agreed-upon and distinctive tag, and then subscribe to the tag feed that Technorati generates.

This is all blog-oriented stuff, that is, you write a blog entry and it gets snarfed up by the aggregator and spat out as a feed (and in other forms). Obviously it is easy to start an anonymous Blogger blog for anonymity.

If you wanted something where posting is as lightweight as Twitter, well, you'd need something else. Nothing comes to mind.
posted by adamrice at 5:28 PM on August 5, 2007

No login or registration should be required, as I'd like publishers to remain anonymous if they'd like.

At the very, very least, then, you should put a captcha on it, or you'll be drowned in spam.
posted by flabdablet at 7:59 PM on August 5, 2007