ReadBurner Adds NewsGator Support

Up and coming meme tracker Read Burner has added built in support for NewsGator products.

The Newsgator integration sees NewGator “clippings” (a bit like shared/ starred items in Google Reader) count towards ReadBurner share counts, meaning the service now meme tracks from a broader number of people, in theory delivering better results.

ReadBurner has also added a “lightbox feature,” so when a user clicks on stories, the story loads in a lightbox on ReadBurner, but notably the lightbox shows the content from the source on the source. It’s a great feature but more importantly it demonstrates a way to deliver an easier, more intuitive user experience without the need to resort to copyright theft. Everyone wins, no one loses.

The thing I like about services such as ReadBurner and competitor RSSmeme (who also is expanding out of Google Reader tracking alone..note I found this link on ReadBurner) is the decentralization of the tracking away from a central short list to a broad cross-section of the community. The real difference is in the results delivered: a broad section, with less dominance by an arrogant few. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly more egalitarian, and that’s always a good thing.