Two 17 Year Olds Create A RSS Based Social Networking Site Out Of Sheer Frustration Of Not Finding One

Eight months ago, two 17 year olds from Hong Kong frustrated after not finding a better way to browse and share content online decided to start BuzzBlaze – a RSS based social networking site. The thought of RSS powering a social networking is indeed new, but what BuzzBlaze has successfully acheived is stringing a social network around the concept of RSS.

For not so geeky crowd, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, which is a web feed format used to publish frequently updated works on sites and blogs. One can subscribe to an RSS of a blog and read it in RSS readers like Google Reader.

The creators of BuzzBlaze have used this very RSS to help people locate and share the best content online. Founder Tony Chen says,” We want to redefine the way we consume content online. We want to empower people to become content curators. We want people to easily discover new content and media online. And we believe we’ve done that with BuzzBlaze.”

The site provides all the functionality of a modern day social networking site right from followers/following concept to the latest activity on the dashboard. BuzzBlaze provides users with the best news reading experience on the web on an easy-to-use streamlined interface. Engross yourself in slick magazine-like articles and easily share them with your friends.

But the site will find it really difficult to find users who understand how RSS works. Last month, there was a Twitter fight between Mike Arrington of Techcrunch and RSS founder Dave Winer over whether RSS is dead in today’s world.

Many think so, while some predict RSS would transform itself into something more easy, something more useful. If BuzzBlaze can achieve or atleast close the gap between the understanding of geeks and non-geeks, then I am sure the site would propel itself into the big league.

After fiddling with the site for a day, I found it a better way to read my RSS feeds compared to my list based interface of Google Reader. The one feature I loved but would definitely be frowned upon by the publishers is that you do not have to leave Buzzblaze to read the posts, which effectively means publishers cannot place their adverts in the post. Other readers like Google Reader integrate Adsense ads into RSS feeds, thereby lending publishers an additional stream of revenue.

The site has everything going with it, hopefully it first musters the support of people who understand the RSS.