Dave Fleet has a great post on being more clear and approachable to the non-geeks on the topic of social media. There are many ways of communicating concepts and he's taking the lead on making it easier to understand. Kudos Dave!

Can't agree more. I would also take the designs of many of these social media out, they're hell of a lot confusing for average citizens and takes too much time and energy to master, which ultimately means you have a less chance of keeping a new visitor come back to your site again. Unfortunately, this is one of the drawbacks of Clipmarks as well, though it fashions a very nice and trendy design, but I think it is too complicated to navigate for average folks.

Arifsali, you make a good point. These sites/tools need to be simpler in design and easier to use. Not to add another site, but have you looked at FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com)? It's simply Google-like layout, and Twitteresque minimal feature set is pretty nice. It allows you to share feeds with friends, comment, and without a lot of effort involved.

Thanks, I will check them out. I have been using Google Reader as my primary RSS; however, I usually end up clipping the interesting news/stories I come across through my feeds.

There was a time when I used to think why in the world these RSS aggregators enabling the social-networking and sharing features for the feeds.....but now, everyone seems to be doing it and it has gotten confusing.

...not enabling.... Netvibes have recently enabled the sharing but I have given up on them a while ago. Google is the best and easiest among all of them.