When we released the Social Bookmarks Preview I did a blog post titled "MSDN Social Platform Feed Service".  I am writing a two part update to that post to go over the changes in the feed service.

Part 1 - Why feeds matter, what's new, and how to use the Social application to build feeds.

Part 2 - More details on the parameters to build your feeds from scratch or change the feeds that we deliver in the Social app. -

Part 1 - Why feeds matter, what's new, and how to use the Social application as a feed builder

Why Feeds Matter

Feeds allow you to track one or more tags to stay on top of those topics for what the community finds important.  Feeds are also a great way syndicate your bookmarks within your network.  The v1 release of MSDN Social, TechNet Social and Expression Social allows for some very customizable feeds. 

What's New

With the release of MSDN Social, TechNet Social and Expression Social we have updated the feeds service to support which supports the following:

• User feeds (new):  User feeds contain just the bookmarks that a user has marked as public.  You can subscribe to other peoples feed and they can subscribe to your feed.
• Feed for a date range (new): Feeds can be limited to a pre-defined date range (1 day, 1 week, 1 month, and 1 year).  
• Feeds for application namespace (updated): Feeds can be limited to just forums threads, or just social bookmarks or both.
• Count (new):  Set the number of bookmarks to be returned on a feed (max of 100).
• Feed by tag  (same): Get a feed by one or more tags
• Feed by brand (same): Get feeds by brand MSDN, TechNet and Expression.
• Locale (new): Get feeds for your locale.

There are two large differences between the preview and the v1 of the feed service for Social are:

1. The base URL has changed:
   • from: http://servicescommunity.microsoft.com
   • to http://services.social.microsoft.com
2. The name value pair are now within the query string it changed
   • from: http://services.community.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/query/namespace/05666658-68ba-4d5f-83c4-a088015f92ce/eq/namespace/b22788b8-c8f1-4df3-aa44-1f457f092c93/eq/or
   • to:  http://services.social.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/?query=brand/Microsoft/eq/nsrecursion/True/eq/timespan/P7D/eq/ns/SocialBookmarking/eq/ns/ForumThreads/eq/locale/1033/eq/and/and/and/and/and&count=100&sort=Popularity

Use the Social application as a feed builder

In the Social Bookmarks preview, the feed  link was static.  With the MSDN Social, TechNet Social and Expression Social v1 release the link to the feed updates as you change your feed.

For example, in this screen shot below I am used the tag filter in the Social application, I am filtered by the tag "social bookmaking" and changed the filter to "Most Recent".

Clicking the RSS icon link changes as you adjust the filter.  http://services.social.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/?  query=brand/Microsoft/eq/nsrecursion/True/eq/ns/SocialBookmarking/eq/ns/ForumThreads/eq/tag/social+bookmarking/eq/locale/1033/eq/and/and/and/and/and&count=100

Here is another example using my feed.  I signed-in and change the navigation from "Community Bookmarks" to "My Home", and clicked called "socialbookmarks".  Now the feed icon points to my bookmarks with the selected tag of "socialbookmarks" http://services.social.microsoft.com/feeds/feed/?query=nsrecursion/True/eq/ns/SocialBookmarking/eq/ns/ForumThreads/eq/tag/socialbookmarks/eq/and/and/and&user=taylorparsons&count=100&sort=Recency

Part 2 - More details on the parameters to build your feeds from scratch or change the feeds that we deliver in the Social app.