Rojo Review

Rojo is a new online RSS Reader. Rojo stands for RSS with mojo. Does it have the mojo it says it does?

Let’s find out.

Upon initial setup, Rojo leads new users through a setup wizard. Essentially, this is a means to let users choose feeds that are recommended by the Rojo editors or to choose feeds from a list of well known publishers.

All feeds are managed in the My Feeds section of the web site. Here, users can Read, Manage, or Add feeds. Users can also elect to go through the setup Wizard again.

Adding feeds is fairly simple. Add either the direct URL for a feed or simply the main page of the blog/news site. With the latter, Rojo will automatically find the feed. If for some reason Rojo does not accept the direct URL to the feed, simply try using the main page of the blog. I have noticed a few cases where the direct URL did not work, but the main page did. Once a feed is added, Rojo now considers it a “channel”. I am not sure why the use of dual terminology here. Rojo does accept feeds created from Technorati watchlists, IceRocket, and PubSub.

For some reason, Rojo does not pay attention to the restrictions placed on a feed by their creators. Most feeds carry only the latest 10 or 20 posts. I added a feed to Rojo and there were the last 500 posts for that blog dating back four months. Why does Rojo do this? and how?

Managing feeds is straightforward. Users can tag or delete their feeds.

Reading feeds is a little different than most RSS Readers. It takes a little time to get used to the look, feel and functionality of the feeds. A user can choose to read ALL recent stories from ALL their subscribed feeds. This is handy, though it could get a little overwhelming if there are a lot of feeds with lots of new stories. It would be nice if a user could choose to read recent stories from a particular tag. UPDATE: I did not realize this at first, but a user CAN read recent stories from a particular tag. Once a feed is organized with a tag, clicking on the tag itself will bring up all the latest stories that are included in that tag. Way cool. This beats reading individual feeds one by one. But all feeds with a certain theme under one tag, click the tag, and see whats new from ALL those feeds.

Feeds are organized by tag not by folder. Feeds can be sorted according to tag, Frequent Feed, Unread Count and Name. Get used to the little grey triangle icon that occurs in several places around Rojo. Clicking the triangle expands/collapses the list or story. Update: Organizing by tag as opposed to folder allows for more flexibility. A feed can have multiple tags, allowing it to be viewed from each of those tag categories. A word of caution, using the remove button will remove the feed not just from the current tag category but from ALL tag categories. Clicking on the X next to the feed name (within Manage Feeds) will remove that tag from ALL the feeds in that category. There is no way to remove an individual feed from a tag.

The Feed list is not made very prominent. It blends into the rest of the site. Since the default sort is by tag, all a new user will see is a grey triangle with the words “feeds w/o tags”. Any newly added, untagged feeds end up in this category. To see a list of feeds, choose the Sort By Name or add tags to organize the feeds and select each tag to see its contents. It seems to me that on a pages labeled “My Feeds” it should be clear where the feeds are located. They need to take a more prominent presence in the presentation of the web page.

In the collapsed mode, a user can see the title of the post, the name of the feed, and the time elapsed since the post was posted. The latter is especially useful to determine freshness of a feed. Clicking the little grey triangle (or clicking Expand All) will reveal the contents of the post. Of course, the contents will be contingent on the what is contained inside the feed itself.

For each post a user can tag it, flag it, send it or share it. Tagging a story adds that story to the collective tag bin of Rojo. For example, tag a story “technology”. Clicking on the technology tag, will bring up all posts tagged with the technology tag. The most recently tagged posts appear first.

Flagging a story, saves the story in a users Saved section. Think of this as “news clippings.” Sending a post enables a user to email it. Sharing a post puts the story in the users Shared folder. This allows the users contacts to be able to view the story.

Rojo does have a “Mark As Read” feature. Post names that appear in bright red have not been read. Names that appear in a darker, duller read have been read. Items can collectively be marked as read. Clicking the grey triangle to expand an individual post marks it as read. Marked as read posts do not disappear, they simply change from bright red to dark red. I am not sure if that is helpful or not. After playing around a bit, I think it is annoying that posts that I could care less about still persist even after being marked as read. I have to wait for that feed to update before it moves down the list?? Why the need to hang onto unwanted material? I am personally thinking that it is better if the article disappears. At the very least, offer users the opportunity to delete read items. I have also noticed a bug where a newly added feed is marked as all read.

The “See What Your Feeds Are Linking To” function let’s users see other blogs that have linked to particular posts. This is helpful to see how popular a particular post might be. It is helpful to see if anyone is linking to the posts in your own blog.

Users can search Rojo as a whole or they can search a particular channel. Remember, a channel in Rojo is a feed.

The Tags section lets a user see what tags they have used in tagging posts. A user can also view what tags are most popular on Rojo.

In the Shared section, Rojo can help users see what stories their contacts are sharing. Of course, one needs to have contacts. Well, one needs to have contacts who are using Rojo. This section will only be useful if Rojo is able to gain a decent sized market share of users. Unfortunately, there is no restriction on sharing. It is all shared or none shared, there is no sharing with only one or two people.

The Saved section includes all the stories a user has flagged for future reference. It also includes a list of post that a user has enabled to be shared. Rojo has also recorded the list of all the posts a user has read. This is determine by whether a user clicked on the grey triangle next to a post. However, if a user chooses to “expand all” and read that way, the story is not included. The story is not included if the collective “Mark as Read” is clicked.

The explore section allows users to browse a directory of feeds created by the Rojo editors.

Improvements:

*Able to read recent stories from a particular tag.
*Feed list made more prominent
*Sharing with only one or two people.
*Fix the bug where a newly added feed is marked as all read.
*Make Marked as Read posts disappear or at least give users that option. Make this similar to the options available in Klipfolio.

The power of Rojo will be in the social characteristics it offers. Tagging and sharing will be important factors once Rojo gains a decent sized user based.

Does Rojo have the mojo? Maybe. It grew on me as I used it more. But I would be hesitant to make it my full time RSS reader since marked as read posts don’t disappear. This just really annoys me. Couple this with Rojo returning more results for a feed than is wanted and information overload is guaranteed.

Update: Rojo is slowly growing on me. I still want more user options as to handle items. I like how Klipfolio handle this. For example, Dismiss All Items, Dismiss This Item, Delete This Item, Delete All Items. Dismiss keeps the item on the list, but it is not highlighted. Delete totally removes the item from the list.