Beta Release: Include RSS Feeds Directly in Your Network's Social Feeds

[Alex]

Following up on our recent release of Twitter Search in Social Feeds, I'm excited to let everyone know that we have added the ability to add RSS feeds to your network's Activity Feed. You might be asking, "How can this help me?" Well, if you have a Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc., blog for your network, you can now grab that RSS feed and plug it in to your Social Feeds page to have those posts appear in the Activity Feed.

Don't have an external blog? Grab the RSS feed from just about any blog or website that has information you think your members will like. You can add up to three RSS feeds, so don't be stingy with them. Experiment to see what works best for you and your members. This is still a beta feature, so you'll want to head to the Ning Labs section of your Dashboard to enable it. Let us know how you plan on using it or how we might tweak it to make it better.

Want to learn to more RSS feeds? We've got a great intro article right here.

---

A few ways you might use this

Showcase Important Bloggers

The easiest way to use this is to just pull in blog RSS feeds from a service like Wordpress.org or Wordpress.com. Both work since they both provide RSS feeds. Maybe you run a Harry Potter fan network, and you know that your members all follow the author's personal blog. No question about it -- that blog is relevant for your members and deserves center stage on your network. Pop in the blog's RSS feed and have that be yet another news source for Top News. Maybe you write a separate Wordpress blog for your community? This is new way to integrate it into your Ning Network.

411 News Feeds

Let's say you run a network for paramedics in the tri-state area, and you want to include updates on the latest news from three important public agency websites. Grab the RSS feeds from the three sites and pop them in your Top News feed. They will update according to time stamps, providing your members with up-to-date alerts about fire-related news. You can go even further and rename "Top News" in the Language Editor to something like "Rescue 411". Or, maybe you run a site for film buffs and want to provide up-to-date movie news about the latest releases. You find a great feed from Rotten Tomatoes that reports on movie openings, which is something you know your members pay close attention to -- so why not put that within easy reach in the Top News section?

Pretty Pictures for Inspiration

You run a network for design nerds. You've noticed there are tons of Tumblr feeds that are based on beautiful images your members would probably dig (like this one). Why not create your own "Inspiration" feed from multiple Tumblr image-based feeds? Grab the RSS feeds you want to include and paste them in. If an RSS feed contains an image, they will show up in your Top News feed. Change "Tops News" to "Design Inspiration" or something that fits your new feed.

[Stefaan Boel]

Same issue over here with my feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/iwizard

[Gary Lefko]

How does the RSS feature work?  How soon does it activate?  Does it just grab as they are posted (one at a time versus our RSS widget where you can set the number returned) I have three RSS feeds and I don't see any entries posted yet under Everything tab view?  I do see Twitter tweets for my hashtag though.

Also, I started out with "see everything" for Top News and Everything then switched to Top News for just featured members--I still see posts from "Everything" under Top News--do the stale posts just go away over time to be replaced by Featured Member posts only?

I like it!

[Gary Lefko]

Now going on four hours and I ONLY see Twitter hashtag responses coming through in my Latest Activity feed--not one RSS post out of the three setup have been seen yet--any ideas what's going on?

[Gary Lefko]

these are the RSS:

http://groups.google.com/group/cobirds/feed/rss_v2_0_msgs.xml
http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/cobirders/rss
http://www.rmbo.org/v3/Home/tabid/41/rssid/2/Default.aspx

[Eric Suesz]

I'm not entirely sure, but I do see that those feeds work fine in my RSS reader app but not in my test network. We'll have someone take a look. This is a beta release, so I expect there will be a few issues to iron out. 

[Eric Suesz]

Gary, can I ask you to try something? Can you temporarily remove your Twitter hashtags, confirm the RSS feeds are appearing, and then look at the timestamps? You don't have to do this, and I will try it myself, but if you have a minute, that would be really helpful. I am curious if there is an odd conflict with your Twitter hashtags. Just a hunch. 

[Gary Lefko]

Done--I removed hashtag and included only one RSS I'll let ya know when something (if) appears

[Gary Lefko]

Still doesn't work ...http://coloradobirder.ning.com/. Note lower right the Long-eared Owl post showed up in normal RSS widget but not Activity Feed

[Eric Suesz]

Thanks for trying that. Well, we need to dig into this a bit more. Wish this was working flawlessly, but with RSS feeds, there are bound to be little details that we need to understand more fully. These reports are really helpful. 

[mark]

I wonder if this could be used to insert an affiliate RSS feed from say linkshare or CJ? 

I wouldn't want to hammer the feed with ads, so some sort of delivery control would be beneficial to turn this awesome new feature to a money making machine!

Is a delivery control option in the works or even on the table for this feature?

[Eric Suesz]

This will display ads if they are in the feed, which I know some folks will like. (Some won't if they are ads they can't control.) We don't plan to build this out to take into account advertising options or any type of control over what is delivered and when. Just pulling in the feeds at this point. 

[Paul Crane]

Is there a certain code we can put in the rss to make it open in separate window or page? I tried to put some in there it just kicks them out when I try it.This is in the section          NING LABS/SETTINGS.