The future of distributed media

Had a great conversation with Barry Parr today, and one of the observations I shared was how much fun I’m having with Google Reader’s “share” function. For those that don’t know, Google Reader has a feature that lets you “share” any item in the reader. (See image to the right.)

I take the feed that Google Reader generates of my shared items, and run it through FeedBurner, where I can add features, track the number of subscribers (amazingly, 30 of you subscribe to my shared items feed), and republish the feed on my own blog.

In talking with Barry, I told him that part of what makes it fun is recognizing that each time I share an item, I’m giving that publisher increased visibility – exposure that the publisher would not necesarrily have received. Even cooler is that periodically, items I shared show up in a feed I subscribe to: Erik Heels’ shared items feed. For instance, Aaron’s post about a little geek humor involving Yahoo and an outfield marker made me chuckle. So I shared it, and then Erik saw it, presumably had the same reaction I did, and shared it.

In other words:

Technosailor —> Google Reader (me) —> My Shared Items —> Google Reader (Erik) —> Erik’s Shared Items —> Google Reader (me)

Now, I recognize this is a little circular. But for the fact that I was seeing a post I’d already seen (there’s something gratifying in knowing that something I shared was also interesting to Erik), the point remains that there’s a significant opportunity as publishers have their content remixed and republished, all because they make the content available in a feed, and applications like Google Reader make it easy to share.

Oh, and notice the ad running in that original post? Because Aaron’s part of b5Media, and b5 participates in the FeedBurner Ad Network, Aaron (and b5) gets credit for the ad generated as a result of this resyndication.