Microsub to Blogroll Idea

I have a blogroll page on this site where I list the blogs which I am actively reading. I love having a blogroll because it makes it easy for people to find other blogs to explore. If I am subscribed to a good blog, the least I can do is add a link to my site so that other people can discover that same blog. However, my current process for updating my blogroll is quite laborious. I have to remember to add links to my blogroll and then add them manually. This isn't too bad if I am adding one or two links but it starts to get tedious if I want to add many links to my blogroll. I am subscribed to around 100 feeds and I don't list them all on my blogroll.

This got me thinking about a service that queried a Microsub reader (the type of reader I use to monitor feeds) and made a list of all of the feeds I follow in a particular channel. This could be done automatically so that anyone could see the feeds to which I am still subscribed. This service could query any channel(s) that I select so that only the feeds that I want to share would be public. This would be important because some people, including myself, will subscribe to feeds that are only meant for them (i.e. private feeds on blogs or feeds hidden behind API keys published by services).

Microsub, by default, only takes a feed URL. A service would thus have to:

1. Get a list of feeds to which you have subscribed in the specified channels.
2. Retrieve the names of those feeds, and maybe the icons associated with the feed too.
3. Save those names and icons alongside the feed URL in a database.
4. Publish a web page that lists all of the feeds to which you subscribe.

This web page would ideally be marked up as a h-feed so that people could subscribe to it and get new feed recommendations. You could also provide an OPML format so that people could easily import all of the feeds to which you have subscribed.

This service could list all of the feeds to which you are subscribed in one big list or group them by channel name. Grouping feeds by channel name would be more intuitive for readers who see your blogroll, however.

I am not going to build this right now but it's something I think should exist. You could get a list of feeds from a Microsub reader with a few API calls. Getting the names and icons associated with a feed is a bit annoying but far from impossible. There are plenty of parsers out there for well-supported feed types like RSS and Atom. feedparser is one such example for the Python programming language.

If you decide to build this, do let me know. I would use a service like what I described above.

Also posted on IndieNews.