Diagram Source : PostRank.com

PostRank is a ranking service for RSS feeds. PostRank ranks an RSS Feed item (example Blog Post) based on the level of user engagement. PostRank measures user engagement using the following attributes: Creating, Critiquing, Chatting, Collecting and Clicking. PostRank calls these attributes as the 5 Cs. Let us look what the 5 Cs really mean.

When someone writes an article in response to your blog post it is called Creating. When a person leaves a comment in your blog post it is know as Critiquing. When a person spreads the message about your blog post via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook it is called Chatting. When a person bookmarks your site in social media sites it is known as Collecting. When someone simply views your blog post it is called Clicking.

Using the above attributes PostRank will determine a score for your RSS Feed item. Each of these attributes carry different weights. The Creating attribute carries more weight followed by Critiquing all the way down to Clicking which carries the lowest weight.

Does this sound too confusing? Don’t worry. Let’s take the following example to understand PostRank:

Mary writes a blog post about Flowers and publishes it online. Since Mary’s post is a great one many people have commented on the post. Some folks have written their own post building up on Mary’s content and have provided a link to Mary’s post (i.e. trackbacks). Many of Mary’s followers on Twitter have tweeted the post.

Tom writes a post on the same topic of Flowers. Tom’s post is not that great. It has few comments and few tweets on Twitter.

Since Mary’s Post has a high level of user engagement, it is given a higher score compared to Tom’s post. PostRank consults a number of services on the Internet to determine the level of user engagement. Google Trackbacks, Twitter and FaceBook to name a few of those services.

David reads both Mary’s and Tom’s post from RSS using PostRank. When David views his subscriptions, Mary’s post will be displayed with a higher score compared to Tom’s post. This way David is able to filter out higher quality content from his list of subscriptions. If David is subscribed to 100’s of RSS feeds on the topic of Flowers he can filter out the quality feed items for his reading based on the PostRank score. Therefore, PostRank is a great tool to prevent you from drowning from information overload.

To use  PostRank you have to create an account at PostRank.com and import all your RSS subscriptions into PostRank. If you do not want to signup for an account at PostRank you can use the PostRank FireFox plug-in to show scores for the RSS Feed items in your Google reader.

Another cool feature with PostRank is the ability to make friends and connections with  fellow PostRank users who read the same RSS feeds that you are subscribed to. This way you find folks who share your common interests and passion.