LazyFeed is a fantastic web app for discovering new content in a flowing, real-time manner.
However, you can’t use it yet.
It’s still in private beta (and no, I don’t have any invites), but if you do get the chance to try out the service via an invite code, definitely take advantage.
There’s nothing particularly mind-blowing about the concept. You plug in a number of keywords or topics that you are interested in and then you get updates from blogs or sites that have posts which focus on those topics. Think of this as a RSS reader mixed with Google Alerts system.
Where LazyFeed gets particularly interesting is in the new site connections. By handing over your Twitter, Delicious, or Flickr username (or the username of someone you may be interested in because they produce high quality content since no password is required… that’s really lazy) or a blog/site URL, keywords from your posts, tweets, bookmarks and pics are picked up and recommendations are made from that data. In other words, it’s the semantic discovery engine we’ve all been buzzing about since web2.0 died.
Why should affiliate marketers care?
LazyFeed offers the best of both worlds for marketers: discovery and specificity. The ability to drill down as far as you want (my topics are pretty broad as you can see in the screen shot above but I’ve experimented and you can get very niche or hyper-local with results), this becomes a very useful tool for affiliate marketers and networks in need of a tool that helps discover new offers, affiliates, content or trends that might not otherwise be available (for cheap).
Again, LazyFeed is in private beta and you have to score an invite code to get access (I received mine on a FriendFeed thread), but stay on the lookout for when they start opening up access.
Just today, there were a number of feature updates:
1. Term: ‘Add’ has changed to ‘Save’.
2. Help section on the home page: As soon as you sign in, you will see ‘Getting Started with Lazyfeed’, just below Hot topics area.
3. A gray status bar has been added at the bottom. This bar includes ‘Saved stuff’ and ‘Topics for lazy me’ which are both important features of Lazyfeed. Saved stuff is where you can view everything you save. Topics for lazy me alerts you whenever new topics are discovered and delivered to you by Lazyfeed. Please refer to help section to learn more.
4. Save button for each entry in ‘Topics for lazy me’: You can now directly save topics from Topics for lazy me and instantly start getting live updates without visiting each page.
Again, nothing earth-shattering, but the simple and ajaxy interface does a good job of staying out of the way of the site’s main accomplishment’s of discovery and specifics… both of which serve affiliate marketers well.
