Mark Fletcher is the 33-year-old developer behind Bloglines, a server-side feed aggregator. He began working on the project in February 2003, and launched it in July. In less than a year, Bloglines has become one of the front runners in the feed-reader market. By combining a clean, access-anywhere UI and a constant stream of smart new features, Bloglines has captured both critical acclaim and wide usage. I spoke with Fletcher via email.

Harold Check: How do you approach developing Bloglines? Do you have a vision you're working towards, or is user feedback the main driver behind changes?
 
Mark Fletcher: I started Bloglines to create tools for myself. I was personally struggling with managing tons of online information, and keeping up to date on all of my interests. I was trying to monitor over 100+ web sites and having to revisit them time and again to determine if any new information had been posted or updated. I was investing a lot of time and felt like it was starting to run my life.
 
At the same time, some interesting web technologies like RSS and Atom started to pop up, making it possible to create an umbrella service that helps people collect and manage lots of information from different sources at a single place.
 
So I had some great resources to work with, and once I launched Bloglines, I found it had a similar kind of viral uptake among users that validated my personal experience. It was clear that other people were encountering similar problems managing online information, and Bloglines was helping to solve those problems. The company was up and running.
 
As we've grown, the development drivers have been a mix of things: First, I'm guided by my own experience as a blogger and a Bloglines subscriber. Second, user feedback is hugely important, because we benefit from the experiences of many people from around the world who are using Bloglines to manage information overload. They tell us what they like, what they don't, and what they wish for; and that perspective helps guide the evolution of the service.
 
The feedback we've received from users and across the blogosphere has been quite encouraging. We feel like we're at the beginning of our journey as a company, and we're 100% focused on creating a great service, adding new features and making sure Bloglines subscribers have a positive experience.
 
HC: What do you make of the standards wars? As a developer, does it bother you to spend time addressing multiple formats and the uncertainty of future formats? Are you in touch with any of the keepers of the current standards?
 
MF: I've spoken with everybody who's active in the standards discussion, so we're in the conversation loop but we maintain a strictly neutral position. Bloglines supports all popular feed formats and we will continue to do so.
 
One of the huge advantages of a web-based service like ours over a desktop newsreader is that we keep current on all the formats and standards on a centralized basis as the technologies evolve. Bloglines users never need to worry about the science behind the service, nor do they have to hassle with upgrades. We rolled out Atom support in December, before anybody else, and our subscribers didn't have to do anything to reap the benefits. The addition was completely seamless for our customers, and that's the way it should be.
 
HC: One of the most compelling features of Bloglines is the metadata created by your users. What's the most compelling feature of standalone feed readers, in your opinion? Can you ever see a point where Bloglines might have a bigger presence on the client side, beyond the notifier?
 
MF: In a world where people are on the go, using many different information devices, I believe the web is really the only way to provide customers with this kind of service. Bloglines provides an incredibly rich interface and a range of services from the server side. We handle all the underlying technologies and ensure a quality experience. As a result Bloglines subscribers get high functionality benefit and zero hassle. Bottom line, we offer a user experience that desktop software can't match.
 
HC: Just as bookmarks (and bookmark managers) became less useful as the number of websites skyrocketed, will the same thing happen when feeds become more pervasive?
 
MF: I think the analogy of bookmark managers to feed readers is flawed. A bookmark is just a static URL. With a feed, you get active real-time information that you actually want to read.
 
Bloglines gives subscribers many more options that go beyond just a basic list of feeds. We're addressing real information overload issues. Bloglines subscribers see what content feeds are alive (or not), they know what content they've read and what they haven't, and they can create community around topics by making their subscription lists public. With our approach to syndication, Bloglines provides a really dynamic user experience that goes well beyond passive bookmarks.
 
HC: My analogy about bookmarks was really just about numbers. People can navigate a few hundred items, whether it's websites or email addresses or whatever. Beyond that, we start to have trouble. With syndication driving us to content, not just on the level of the page, but at the level of the post, and increasingly, at the additional level of the comment, how do you see readers coping with this? Will they just happily add their first 50 feeds and then get more and more reluctant to add new ones? Will additional levels of filtration be needed? I guess I'm saying: Syndication-reading tools not only have to scale massively, but need to help the user to scale his/her consumption massively. Do you have any ideas on how we'll accomplish this?

MF: You're absolutely correct. It's all part of the information overload problem that I talked about earlier. While Bloglines already has many features that help people deal with information overload, we've only just begun tackling the problem. I believe there are three areas that need to be addressed: additional filtration will be part of the solution, but only a part. In addition, it's also a major user interface issue and it's also a data collection and analysis issue. We have several initiatives designed to address these areas; indeed it's our main focus going forward. I can't detail what we're working on, but over the next several months you'll start to see some of the results of our work.
 
This is where things get really exciting and where I believe Bloglines has an advantage as a server-side system. We have the opportunity to take aggregation to a whole new level, to make dealing with massive amounts of information practical and easy. It's an incredible challenge and I can't think of a more fun project to work on.