SoloSub is for button addicts

October 06, 2005

You may have noticed that I've had this solosub button on my site for a while, I launched the solosub service about a while back without telling anyone. I just put the button up on my site, and waited to see if it would catch on. So far I think it has, so let me explain what it is.

What's the problem?

So you have an RSS feed and you want to make it easy for bloglines users to subscribe, so you add one of those bloglines buttons , then you figure hey I better not leave out My Yahoo! so you add a MyYahoo! button , but newsgator is also popular so you better also add a newsgator button , but I hear Rojo is picking up steam so add that rojo button , and scoble will rat you out if you don't add a mymsn button , and hey lets not forget about the pluck button - and I could keep going...

Dave Winer calls this the Yahoo! Problem:

Anyway, all those logos, when will it end? I can't imagine that Microsoft is far behind, and then someday soon CNN is going to figure out that they can have their own branded aggregator for their own users (call me if you want my help, I have some ideas about this) and then MSNBC will follow, and Fox, etc. Sheez even Best Buy and Circuit City will probably have a "Click here to subscribe to this in our aggregator" button before too long.

That's the problem.

-Dave Winer

How does SoloSub solve it?

Use one button (or text link): and point it to your solosub page.
Your solosub page is: http://solosub.com/sub/http://YOUR_RSS_FEED_URL
On that page your readers can pick which RSS reader they use, I will keep it updated with the most popular options.
Your readers gets a quick definition of what a FEED is, I call them content feeds, not RSS feeds or ATOM, because those terms are hard to market. (feel free to suggest a better definition than mine)
Users can set a cookie that remembers what aggregator they use, so anytime they see a SoloSub button they click on it, and they will be redirected to their aggregator's add page.
You get stats for your solosub page - I added a simple hit counter to the solosub page, as long as it doesn't slow down page loads too much it will stay.

Here's a screen shot of my solosub page:

What other people have already said about SoloSub

Even though I launched solosub quietly it still managed to generate some talk, I have already addressed some of the issues brought up, and make sure you checkout the FAQ. I realize that SoloSub is not for everyone - nothing is, and besides some people can't get enough of those buttons.

Feedback welcome.

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add to del.icio.us | Tags: solosub, rss, atom, feed, xml, bloglines, rojo, pluck, newsgator, mymsn, myyahoo

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Comments

On 10/06/2005 at 4:37:33 PM EDT daniel wrote:

feedburner has had something similar i think, check it http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home

On 10/06/2005 at 4:56:39 PM EDT Pete Freitag wrote:

Daniel, take a closer look at it. SoloSub doesn't host your feed like feedburner does. With solosub you still control your feed hosting.

On 11/19/2005 at 8:57:26 AM EST Maxime wrote:

Really nice service! Are you going to add Google Reader support? Read there:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/addfeed.html

On 12/30/2005 at 6:14:49 PM EST Sales wrote:

This is great stuff! We would be honored if we could be added to this business blogger. We are from the World Business for sale is the leading independent businesses for sale listing service http://www.worldbusinessforsale.com/

On 02/24/2006 at 1:51:41 AM EST Pagerank-prediction.com wrote:

Hi Pete,

Thanks for the link for the feedburner. We are from; http://www.pagerank-prediction.com/

On 02/24/2006 at 1:52:00 AM EST Pagerank-prediction.com wrote:

Hi Pete,

Thanks for the link for the feedburner. We are from; http://www.pagerank-prediction.com/

On 05/15/2006 at 2:48:24 PM EDT Cameron wrote:

Great service, but I hate the way you implemented "Remember My Selection". Once having checked this, there is no way to get back to the page to change the selection, short of deleting a cookie. Every time I go back to the page, it jumps ahead to the remembered feed reader.

On 05/15/2006 at 3:01:57 PM EDT Pete Freitag wrote:

Cameron,

If you goto http://solosub.com/ it should allow you to change your preference.

On 08/04/2006 at 4:17:58 AM EDT duncan wrote:

Pete, is solosub dead? last couple days haven't been able to connect to it.

On 08/19/2006 at 1:27:40 PM EDT http://tuxcore.ath.cx wrote:

Tried to get onto solosub but seems to be dead?????

On 08/23/2006 at 5:12:42 AM EDT duncan wrote:

been working intermittently for me for a while. by which i mean the solosub icon i use on my site (but is hosted on solosub.com) often fails to load in. today at solosub.com i get: Failed to connect to BlueDragon; check the status of the Java process.

Group = default Address = 127.0.0.1:9999 The error number is -1

On 12/16/2006 at 5:59:32 PM EST mavines wrote: