Social Networking + RSS = Rojo

Upon registering, Rojo leads new users through a simple setup wizard. This is an essential way for users to get familiarized with Rojo and choose feeds that are recommended by Rojo editors and/or choose feeds from a list of well known publishers such as New York Times, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, TIME magazine, CNet, USA Today and the like. During this process, you get to choose what type of stories/news you would be interested in getting and from which publisher/blogger. Once you are done signing up you can start your journey with Rojo.

Feeds

Rojo is very systematic and the layout is simple. The chronic problem with most RSS readers is the clutter caused due to the sheer amount of RSS news subscribed for it, Thankfully Rojo doesn’t suffer from this. All the content is customised to what you would like to read. Rojo has recently had an overhaul in its look and structure of its webpages. The pages look cleaner, rounder and more appealing – minus the usual clutter that other RSS readers usually display. Clicking on the “My feeds” button will display all the feeds that you have chosen to receive during your sign up process. They appear on the left hand column of the webpage and are organised by keywords or tags that you’ve assigned to them.

Adding a feed is a no brainer, click on the "add" button, enter a URL or the publisher’s name in their respective fields and that’s it, the feed comes in the Rojo list.

Sorting out your feeds is simple—when on your feeds page, you can tag individual feeds by just typing in your own “tag” (like a folder name) in the tag field below each story title. Once you have tagged a story, it’s becomes easy for you to find it later on due to the mental association of the tag that you enter.

Here’s what most of you will like, if a story interests you and you would like to send the same to a friend, you can quickly email the story by simply clicking on the email button which is visible after you expand that particular listing.

Viewing one’s feed is really simple and is similar to the Windows Explorer tree-like feel of collapsible folders. In the collapsed view, you see the title/name of the post and the time elapsed since the news was posted. If you’d like to have a sneek peek at what the feed is all about, you can get a gist of it by viewing it in the expanded view. Just expand all the feeds. You are given complete control of the each post—you can tag it, flag it, or email it.

Tags

Rojo has an excellent tagging system that enables you to tag all your important feeds, so that you can find them later. Once on the tags page, you will find that there is a tags list that is for both, feeds as well as stories. The bigger the font size, the more popular it is. Tags on your tag page also help you to know what other users on Rojo are reading up on and you can later add those feeds to your list. On your tags page you can also find tags assigned by you, your contact or everyone else on Rojo by setting it in the "Tagged By" field.

Sharing?

This is a grey area as far as Rojo and the creators of Rojo have not made any substantial efforts to clear it up. Earlier, on Rojo.com, there used to be a section that enabled users to share their feeds with particular contacts. Now, Rojo allows sharing but has made it an “all or nothing” proposition wherein you can share feeds with either all your contacts or none of them at all but not privately as it allowed before? Perhaps the Rojo team is working on this, more details later.

Saved

On this page you can consolidate and collect all your feeds and stories you have read, shared or flagged for any future reference. Everything that has been flagged before it is displayed here. All flagged stories have small little red flags along with it. You can also “unflag” your stories by clicking on the “unflag” link.

Contacts

On your contacts page, you can look for new contacts and friends by their Rojo IDs or email addresses. Also along is a list of people that you have contacted or been contacted by is displayed.

Rojo’s Mojo, is its ability to effectively utilize the power of sharing. You can tag information that is most important to you and share it helping you as well as the community to grow in the collective sense. It’s a great way to find, learn and sort information.

Today

In this section of Rojo.com, users will get to view all the latest feeds that are being published “today” i.e. on that particular day. The list is updated everyday. On this page, you also have the Rojo tag’s list displayed on the left sidebar of the webpage.

FeedShare(ing)

FeedShare is a service unique to Rojo. It’s is about promoting your own feeds and sharing your own space. It’s a service that helps bloggers with similar interests promote each other. As a blogger participant you give exposure on your site to other blogs in the network, and in return your blog will be promoted on similar sites in the network. So, simply put, you can put a feed listing on your site and promote your feed. For every page view you give you give the blogger network, you get one back.

Rojo is a good and popular option for anyone serious about RSS. It’s great to see that the creators are constantly improving and enhancing their service (such as the introduction of FeedShare). This is one service you don’t want to miss.