I’ve been working on a project for my classes and now wonder what value this may have in the business blogging world.
See an example of one I’ve created to expose students to various writers on the Web. Writers :: Combined posts of various writers on the net. The blog includes excerpts from various “Journalism, Copywriters, Direct Marketing, Speechwriters, PR, (and) Marcom” authors.
Aggregator blogs.
The aggregator is like a harvester or collector. It goes out, automatically, and takes excerpts from other blogs or news sites with RSS feeds. Then, those excerpts are automatically posted in the new blog. That is what the “Writers” blog does. It goes out to the eleven blogs listed under “Writer Post Archives” or “About Each Author/Site” and then republishes those excerpts in the “Writers” blog.
With the rising adoption of RSS (and the conversations we’ve had about it here), I wonder, “Does this type of blog show promise for some business sites? Intranet? Extranet?”
Consider this possible integration. You have a travel agency. Using tools like Yahoo! News - RSS to create custom feeds of news articles by “your search term(s)” and target particular countries or regions. The blog then becomes one linked section of your site.
The downside? Some news may lead to competitors. But, is that bad? Comparisons. Transparency. Would this not exhibit a confidence in your products/services?
A more practical application might be for an internal/intranet blog for you and/or your employees. Password protected from the outside, you custom build your tracked feeds so you can keep up on the latest news and activities of your competitors - new industry trends/developments. Since it is internal, you could enable the ‘comments’ function of a blog and have running discussions among teams working on a particular project. Then, your employees track the ‘comments RSS feed’ of the blog with one simple link (read through any RSS reader) - tracking numerous articles and comments - and you have a great research/brainstorming tool. Or, do you?
Or, to just read and follow customized feeds, a “Feed on Feeds” application might work best. It could still be internal/intranet. See this implementation I created sampling Writer Blogs and Writer Resources. A frames view layout is also available.
The upside of both these options is that the software platforms I used are opensource. Free. Use WordPress or Feed on Feeds. This could be good for a small one-person PR shop to use as one more tool / tactic to offer a client. I think these things - blogs and sites of many kinds - have ‘billable’ potential. But, how much, I don’t know.
So, what do you think? Any applications you can see for this type of ‘business blog’ add-on? There are so many questions spinning in my mind on this. Are any of you developers including this kind of customization/service for your clients? You needn’t name ‘names’. 
By the way, thanks to Bill French for help in starting me on this ‘quest’ for another way to press blogs and CMS into service. I always find myself thinking how Bill, Dee and Tara’s companies are doing these things for PR and business. And, I wonder how all of you practitioners might be using these options you are suggesting to clients. So, my question is also aimed at David, Guillaume, Josh, Neville, Octavio and Dale, too. 
And forgive me. I did cross post this. Normally I remain quiet and only comment. But, I really want to hear your feedback on this one, please. Thanks.
