1.21.2008

May I be alerted when a story is updated?

As I was checking out this story from recordonline.com this afternoon (received via HVMG's Twitter profile... thanks, HVMG!), it occurred to me that there was no way -- short of revisiting the Web site or keeping the page open so I could refresh it periodically -- to stay updated on the story in an automated, user-friendly way.

Thinking out loud (well, virtually out loud) here, but as a user I'd love to opt into an alert when an ongoing story I've caught in midstream is updated. Ideally I could choose from either e-mail, IM or text alert options, and maybe even an RSS feed specific to that story that I could quickly subscribe to it in my Google Reader.

It would function in much the same way as when you receive e-mail when your blog posts have received comments, or when your posts on forums have received follow-up comments.

I've not seen this functionality anywhere. Have you?

2 comments:

Joe said...

It'd be a great service, a nice way to entice people to register, and a good way to get to know those registered users better.

It wouldn't take *too* much to pull it off, either. But obviously, you'd have to run a pretty tight editing shop to avoid: Multiple micro-edits, same story published under more than one slug, same story republished under a different slug after a significant update...

KI Clergy said...

An interesting possibility is to use a tool like Rasasa which will push an RSS feed out to your IM client. Easy to set-up, although it does does depend on how sites handle their feeds.