The Future of RSS is Not Blogs

notepage writes "Blogs vaulted RSS into the limelight but are unlikely to be the force that sustains RSS as a communication medium. The biggest opportunities for RSS are not in the blogosphere but as a corporate communication channel. Even now, businesses that were initially reluctantly evaluating RSS are beginning to realize the power and benefit of the RSS information avenue. The inherent capacity for consumers to select the content they wish to receive will be the driving mechanism for keeping advertisements to a minimum and content quality consistent."

Comments

Advertising

[Threni]

> The inherent capacity for consumers to select the content they wish to receive
> will be the driving mechanism for keeping advertisements to a minimum and
> content quality consistent."

You sure? Between RSS feeds and Firefox's Adblock plug in I hardly see any adverts these days! Having said that, I'd like some way of having Firefox automatically select the `printer happy` version of a story, as they're entirely free of ads most of the time.

Re:Advertising

[Shaper_pmp]

Yes. You're using RSS and an RSS Feed reader to avoid as many adverts as you can, and increase the amount of interesting, informative content you see. This is exactly what the quote meant.

Re:Advertising

[glamslam]

I'd like some way of having Firefox automatically select the `printer happy` version of a story, as they're entirely free of ads most of the time.

Get Greasemonkey extension. Then, find the extension for it that does this--Its called Friend-of-Print-Friendly v1.3. At least thats what I have. Bam... Just what you asked for. Sorry I'm too lazy to find the links for you. Google is your friend.

Re:Advertising

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

I'd give it a few days before installing Greasemonkey.

"Yesterday, Mark Pilgrim discovered and announced a very serious security vulnerability in Greasemonkey."

http://greaseblog.blogspot.com/2005/07/mandatory-g reasemonkey-update.html

This post brought to you by my sponsor

[Brunellus]

keep advertising to a minimum? I think not. The best we can hope for is far more targetted ads...

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[ScentCone]

keep advertising to a minimum? I think not. The best we can hope for is far more targetted ads...

You say that with resignation, like it's a bad thing. Would you rather that the people who actually produce all of the content that everyone wants have no way to cover the costs of their efforts, obtain health insurance, or go on a vacation once in a while? Everyone seems to want some ad-free, subscription-free paradise where they get all in the info and entertainment they could ever want, packaged up just for them, at no cost. It's not just that it's unrealistic, it's that it suggests a serious disconnect between the people that consume things and the realities of producing/distributing what they consume, and what it takes to allow talented, dedicated people to dedicate their waking hours to creating it. Targeted ads are probably one of the very best approaches to keeping the content producers happily producing without everything being subscription-based and/or DRMed past some threshold of pain. And the more targeted, the more likely it is to be the ideal mix for everyone involved.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[FLEB]

I'd rather have targeted ads than scattershot, as well. The biggest consideration, however, is how much information I'm giving up in order to be "targeted". Something as simple as a "thumbs up/down" on ads or (more likely usable) content might provide a good model.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[ThosLives]

You are touching on some deep economics concepts here, and I can't say that I have a full understanding (who does anyway) of it, but here are some thoughts.

You correctly point out that without customers for a product or service, those that are providing that product or service won't have enough revenue for the things they want. Now, which is better for society: to institute advertising to convince people to become customers, or to use marketing to find out what types of products or services will gain you customers? I don't know if this can be answered because how do you define "better for society" in this situation? Here's an example: I basically throw out every circular I get in the mail - I'm talking print material that I get at least 4 out of the 6 days mail comes in a week. In my mind, this is a great waste of paper and energy to produce, as those circulars will not get me to buy any more than I would have without them (they might, at best, get me to purchase a certain brand over another with a coupon - if I were already planning on making a purchase). So what would be better - to not hire folks to make those circulars and use less resources and drop prices so I can buy other things, or keep those people employed and sustain the "advertising tax" on all the products/services I use to subsidise these people? I would rather those people not be stuck in advertising and doing neat research or something, and having more money in my pocket to buy the things that the displaced advertisers develop. Hopefully this discourse was not too elementary and my point wasn't lost in the details.

The real problem I see is that very few people are willing to displace themselves to go out on a limb to provide something for which the number of customers is unknown; indeed the system makes this difficult (with things such as health care, as was mentioned by the parent). This leads me to believe that people find living in a system known to be wasteful (in an economic sense here but I believe this applies to things like politics and morality as well) to be better than taking a risk to improve the system. I have not yet seen any good ways in which to encourage this behavior, though I'm doing the best I can at figuring out how to start some projects on my own and "take the risk" so to speak.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[lightningrod220]

I think people are getting sick of ads, to the point that they will go elsewhere for it. Recently, I went to see Batman Begins in the theater, and the movie didn't start until 32 minutes after the posted time. What was keeping it? Ads, ads, and more ads! They even had a really irritating commercial for Fanta. Two families in the front of the theater basically said "screw this" after about 20 minutes, and walked out. I can imagine their irritation trying to get their money back, but it's just easier to pirate the movie and watch it on the computer than it is to sit through a half-hour of ads after paying out the nose for the chance to see the movie. Some DVDs are trying to force me to watch the previews on the disk before I can get to the menu now! I will not purchase a disk that does that, and if I have paid money for it, I ask for a refund. You can imagine that by the time people have paid for such garbage, they won't want it in the free stuff, either.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[cayenne8]

"Everyone seems to want some ad-free, subscription-free paradise where they get all in the info and entertainment they could ever want, packaged up just for them, at no cost."

Hmmm....much like the internet was back when I got on it...sometime about 1993?

I was sitting the other day, trying to remember when it was exactly, that I saw my first ad on a website....

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[Schnapple]

Recently, I went to see Batman Begins in the theater, and the movie didn't start until 32 minutes after the posted time. What was keeping it? Ads, ads, and more ads! They even had a really irritating commercial for Fanta. Two families in the front of the theater basically said "screw this" after about 20 minutes, and walked out.

Seriously? Left over ads? I hope they never plan to see a movie again because this concept is never going away. Methinks perhaps they went to go get a coke and you didn't see them come back in.

I can imagine their irritation trying to get their money back, but it's just easier to pirate the movie and watch it on the computer than it is to sit through a half-hour of ads after paying out the nose for the chance to see the movie

It's easier to spend the umpteen hours to download a shitty quality video of a movie from a theater than it is to ignore the ads for a half hour or, better yet, just show up late?

Some DVDs are trying to force me to watch the previews on the disk before I can get to the menu now! I will not purchase a disk that does that, and if I have paid money for it, I ask for a refund.

If you've seen that recently, it won't last. Disney did it on the initial print runs of Tarzan and got so many complaints that they vowed never to do it again. That pretty much set the precedent for "make sure they can skip the ads". Now sometimes you'll get a DVD for free (like when Pizza Hut was offering movies with a pizza) and you can't always skip the commercials on those (depends on the player I found). In that case you get what you pay for.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[Irish_Samurai]

I basically throw out every circular I get in the mail - I'm talking print material that I get at least 4 out of the 6 days mail comes in a week. In my mind, this is a great waste of paper and energy to produce, as those circulars will not get me to buy any more than I would have without them (they might, at best, get me to purchase a certain brand over another with a coupon - if I were already planning on making a purchase).

You make an interesting point, but your perspective is that of a singular entity - yourself. Marketing and Advertising both target groups. There is no such thing as individual marketing. As much as people like to pretend they are a unique snowflake, the fact is that they are all part of a target demographic, and if you know your demographic you can speak to them directly. The circulars you refer to are done with such frequency because they are cost effective. Now, you may throw them away, but at least 15 - 20% of the people who receive those mailings respond with a purchase of goods or services. The art for these circulars cost maybe $1000 from a freelancer, and that is VERY high. Add overpriced copywriting costs of another $1000. Send out 100,000 "postcards" with a printing and mailing cost of $5000, once again way overpriced. If the usual low end percentage of people respond, 15%, at a price point of $25 - then you have sold $375000 worth of product.

Now, lets break that $7000 dollar advertising cost down among the people who bought the product. Each person payed fifty cents extra for their $25 dollar product. That kinda savings is NOT going to inspire people to purchase a product. You will make more money by increasing the cost of a product marginally to increase the amount of sales more than you would by letting a product's cost speak for itself.

Now, which is better for society: to institute advertising to convince people to become customers, or to use marketing to find out what types of products or services will gain you customers?

These are little off. Advertising is used to NOTIFY customers that a product is available, and perhaps educate them on the particulars of said product. Hopefully resulting in educating a person who would buy that product. Marketing is used to discern whether a product is profitably viable before it's made, to detirmine who the product's target is, and what are the most cost effective ways of genrating sales against that target.

This having been said, nothing pisses me off more than when some asshat Marketing guy thinks he can use all his formulas and research to create a "super product." I got your super product right here, it's called water - and at a price point of ZERO everyone will want some.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[LandKurt]

The circulars you refer to are done with such frequency because they are cost effective. Now, you may throw them away, but at least 15 - 20% of the people who receive those mailings respond with a purchase of goods or services.

I've always wondered who really profits from those circulars. I've heard stories of small printing shops making little to no profit off printing them, and of small businesses convinced to advertise and getting no response. I suspect that it is the middleman that profits, as always, the ad agency that puts it all together. Or maybe the local business, printer and ad agency are all struggling to just barely get by. Because I don't think there is a whole lot of money to be made off that sort of thing.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[Irish_Samurai]

All those stories are probably true. The problem with circulars is that quite frequently they aren't targeted correctly, or they are used with a scatter mentality that resembles spam.

And this is true of most forms of advertising and marketing available to small businesses. The busines doesn't understand it, so they make poor decisions regarding it, effectively lowering their return on investment. The printers don't really make money on it cause postcards and flyer mailers aren't have close to 0 margin.

Ad agencies that work with small businesses most definitely DO profit. They get paid regardless, but that is not as evil as it sounds. Ad Agencies are consultants to the business owners. Quite often a small business owner will force an ad agency to alter advertising and marketing plans to reflect THEIR personal views of the marketing materials. If it doesn't make them want to buy it, why would anyone else buy it. It is this centric mentality that quite often ruins a fledgling campaign. The Business is a customer of the ad agency, and the "customer is always right" rule is in effect. If the business wants to advertise its product on a totally irrelevant manner using detrimental wording because that is how the owner feels, guess whats going to happen. The Ad Agency is going to try to consult, and then do what it is told.

Now, there are unscrupulous "ad agencies" out there who prey on the ignorance of the small business owner. These guys are the same thing as Nigerian Scam artists. There are also serious ad agencies that will tell a client to "fuck off" and refund them their money because they will not have their name associated with such a mangled mess. I happen to work with one of the latter types. Ultimately, marketing and advertising is like a controlled gamble. You can only control so many factors, and sometimes outside factors will maul the outcome.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[ScentCone]

Hmmm....much like the internet was back when I got on it...sometime about 1993?

But that's my whole point. It wasn't free then, either. It was just other people paying for your use of their systems. That was before the huge audiences started costing content providers so much money that they couldn't run their sites without some cashflow. Even modest sites were being run off of other budgets, and it took a while for the people who owned the servers and the bandwidth to realize that being charitable was eating into the money they had for daily operations. There are still plenty of ad-free sites - most reflect the owner's willingness to pay your way through your visit. I run many sites - some with not an ad to be seen, and some that exist solely for that purpose.

Re:This post brought to you by my sponsor

[RMH101]

"If you've seen that recently, it won't last. Disney did it on the initial print runs of Tarzan and got so many complaints that they vowed never to do it again. That pretty much set the precedent for "make sure they can skip the ads". Now sometimes you'll get a DVD for free (like when Pizza Hut was offering movies with a pizza) and you can't always skip the commercials on those (depends on the player I found). In that case you get what you pay for."

Crap. Certainly in the UK just about every one of my commercial DVDs have these restrictions. Kids want to watch their cartoons? No chance until you sit through 10 minutes of ads for other DVDs - this is a long time for a small child.
Solution? Don't buy them, or rip and burn them with DVDshrink and remove the access restrictions.

Technology Or Message?

[DanielMarkham]

This is the old "push versus pull" marketing discussion. Are people tired of push communications, where their email inboxes fill up with garbage? Absolutely. But the real question is how to enact a "pull" distribution system that also sells stuff. The author seems to make the point for directly replacing newsletters and other corporate communications with RSS feeds. sounds good, but I don't think it's the complete picture. The basic problem is one of personality -- most corporate communications are about as personable as a TV commercial. Impersonal works great when you're mass-distributing the message, but from a pull standpoint I think the format and method of content creation will need to change, not just the technology. My two cents.

Robot Soccer Champions by 2050?

Re:Technology Or Message?

[dan the person]

RSS can contain links to a web page.

A web page can be as personal or impersonal as the author wants.

Just cause blogs are personal doesn't mean all content linked to by RSS has to be

Re:Technology Or Message?

[ffdixon]

I work at a company (http://www.serence.com/) that builds Dashboards that monitor, among other things, RSS feeds, so we think a lot about the future of RSS, how corporations will adopt it, and how advertising might shape it.

A lot of people are commenting on the growing amount of advertising in feeds and trying to guess "What's next for RSS?"

We think RSS will follow a trend that is very similar to e-mail, and I think the parallels reveal some insight into the future of RSS for users.

Look closely at e-mail. It started grass roots (ignoring the few proprietary e-mail systems that large companies spent millions to develop and deploy). It was person-to-person. It was inherently insecure. People used it because it was easy, personal and saved them time and effort. Over time, corporations sanctioned it to increase efficiency. And people take personal interest in their inbox. This is my e-mail inbox and, as such, attempts at advertising (spam) are met with resistance. Same goes with advertising in your IM client - it is considered an invasion.

RSS is on a similar path. It started outside the firewall. It was person-to-person via blogs. It is inherently insecure (though there is interest in Secure RSS). People use it because it is easy, personal and saves them time and effort. We're now also seeing corporations integrating it to increase efficiency. And, I believe, people relate to their feeds the same personal way as their inbox. These are my feeds and any advertising will be met with resistance.

The key point is that E-mail/RSS is a user-driven technology. The adoption will be driven by quality of feeds (which is what FeedForAll is focused on) ease of use, and increased capabilities for users to further personalize their awareness (which is what we focus on).

Regards,... Fred
--
Life is NP-Complete

Ad blocking?

[trompete]

I've noticed that a lot of RSS providers, Slashdot included, already put lots of Ads into their RSS feeds.

I use Firefox with AdBlock for browsing and Thunderbird for RSS viewing, which hosts the pages. Has anybody successfully blocked ads with Thunderbird using a plugin?

Re:Ad blocking?

[BewireNomali]

I'm wondering if what is meant by the article is that RSS feeds will allow marginally interested potential consumers to easily keep track of product updates, costs, and evolutionary cycles for products.

Interested in DAPs? Subscribe to an aggregate feed that links to the corporate blogs of the top ten DAP producers and google through them for information pertinent to you. It's unobtrusive advertising always available to you. That way, big companies can avoid spamming, which they currently do, and the companies that establish the best relationships with their consumers generate a word of mouth that will translate into sales.

Maybe your purchase of a flat screen is dependent on the companies official stance on exploited labor. That stuff is probably on their blog.

Maybe you want Dallas Maverick season tickets, but only if you get a good sense of the team's direction from the owner's mouth. Go to Mark Cuban's blog (www.blogmaverick.com btw).

I didn't read the article though, so maybe I've got it all wrong.

Re:Ad blocking?

[ScentCone]

Has anybody successfully blocked ads with Thunderbird using a plugin?

Right, because for God's sake, we wouldn't want the people producing the material you're consuming to actually cover their overhead or (gasp!) see their pursuit as a way of actually improving their lifestyle or anything Evil like that. It's completely reasonable for a distributor of free (to you) material to look to inline ads as way of offsetting their costs. Yeah, it's text. But bandwidth still isn't free (nor is office space, employee health insurance, etc).

Re:Ad blocking?

[trompete]

Just because I don't look at them doesn't mean I don't download them. I have AdBlock set that way.

Re:Ad blocking?

[GraemeL]

You might want to look at Bloglines. It's a free, web based, RSS aggregator.

This has the advantage of remembering which articles that you've already seen if you view your feeds from multiple locations. As it's web based, your Firefox AdBlock is built in.

It also offers a simpler interface designed for mobile devices if you have the capability of accessing the web on the move.

Re:Ad blocking?

[ThosLives]

Free markets would balance this out; advertising makes it not a free market. Here's why:

If the [content providers] did not get revenue from advertising, if I didn't pay the [content providers] they would have to stop producing it so I would lose the use of the [content]. If I didn't value this [content] in the first place, as indicated by me not paying, I can't complain that it went away. If, however, I want it to stay, I should be willing to pay for it directly, not indirectly through "advertising tax".

Now, with advertising, who are [content providers] really serving? In a round-about way they are providing [content] to people, but if they lost advertising [revenue] they'd go out of business. So, in reality, these [content providers] are simply subcontracted advertisers, using [content] to get people to view ads. This is a disturbing business model, not because it doesn't work but because it allows people to get the idea that things are free. It's a great ruse by the Big Companies to have you pay to [see stuff] you want (the [content]) through a middle man (the Big Companies) while they (the middle men) take out a cut. It would be far more economically efficient to simply pay the [content provider] in the first place and cut out the middle man.

Note that I don't think the above discussion applies to informational websites by Big Companies about their own products; it is understood that part of their product or service is making you known about it. Now, if I went to, say, Intel's website to look up reference information for a chipset and had to see or block or whatever advertisements for Pepsi, I would seriously wonder about what is going on at Intel's web department.

Re:Ad blocking?

[ScentCone]

So, in reality, these [content providers] are simply subcontracted advertisers, using [content] to get people to view ads.

No, in reality, they're choosing one of several revenue options. It's more appropriate to say that the publishers are working for their audience, and finding a way to fund the publishing of the material the audience wants to see. If they don't produce content the audience wants, there is no opportunity for revenue (because there are no eye

Re:Ad blocking?

[ScentCone]

[oops - cont'd]: ...no eyeballs or actions on the ads. You don't work for the audience, nothing works.

This is a disturbing business model, not because it doesn't work but because it allows people to get the idea that things are free.

Then it should have been disturbing for a couple hundred years or so. You may pay a quarter for some newspapers, but no one thinks in only costs a quarter to produce it (or shouldn't). Regardless, the problem here isn't the bloggers (or whoever is running the ads), it's the larger society that emphasizes the "free-ness" of everything (free public schools, free roads, free room and board for kids) - none of which are free. Kids should be shown early and often that everything has a cost, and that you're either paying it directly, or indirectly, or someone else is.

It would be far more economically efficient to simply pay the [content provider] in the first place and cut out the middle man.

I have to disagree. One Google session on a given topic, and I'll probably visit a dozen web sites. Do I really want to have to perform financial transactions at the rate of one or two per minute in order to scout for information?

Re:Ad blocking?

[trompete]

Thank you!!

Re:Ad blocking?

[ThosLives]

I agree that a problem is the desire for "free-ness"; that was part of what I was trying to convey. This idea of "entitlement to [whatever]" is really causing a lot of problems in society, but delving into that would be too great a digression.

Note also that I said economically efficient, not what is easier for you. While it might be best for a single person to not have to pay a bunch of content providers, if everyone does it that might not be best (for the life of me I can't remember the term for this phenonmenon).

The tough question is whether or not advertising is a "lubricant" for an economy, helping it keep going, or a drag, sucking up resources that could be better spent elsewhere. My guess is that advertising acts as both - for instance, it helps get things moving when there is a truly new product, but I've got to believe its a drag when it's simply for another flavor of diet cola. The fact that it goes both ways is what makes it so annoying - it would be nice if it fell neatly into a single category.

Re:Ad blocking?

[ScentCone]

In my example of a typical Google session, I was trying to convey that much of the world works in the way I'm describing - hopping from site to site, many of which one has never encountered before. The huge productivity gained by being able to plow through information (yes, and much disinformation) withou thaving to have your credit card handy - that's definately the sort of thing that allows our economy, no matter which part of the up/down cycle it's in, to really thrive. It's that speed of information and integration of it into the things that we all do (work, social activities, etc). Those companies that embrace that quick access to information are the ones that will increasingly please their audience and attract new business. I think that to the extent that advertising helps speed that up, it's on the lube side of the ledger. To the extent that we have to waste time learning tools to block particularly obnoxious ads, it's corrosive. But this is all so young that it's no surprise we haven't developed a sensible, well-balanced culture around it yet.

The return of the Push Internet...

[Woodie]

Wow -

I guess it's true, pop will eat itself. Remember when "push" internet was all the rage? Well, we all knew it wasn't really "push" at all, more like a periodic polling of "channels" of information. For a while there, Internet Explorer had a "channel subscription" feature. And there were all sorts of silly little news-ticker applets you could download and install, and then configure to pull various topics to you.

Hey wow look! It's a brand new wheel! It's round like the old one, and goes round and round like the old one.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[trompete]

It's funny, thinking back to when I first used Win98 and saw all of that useless crap come up on my Active Desktop.

Here we are in 2005, and I'm subscribed to 25 news feeds :)

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[TorKlingberg]

This shows that sometimes, a hyped name and a lot of marketing and media attention actually hurts a technology.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[birder]

I'm the opposite. I actually really enjoyed PointCast back in the day. And now I'm completely disinterested in RSS feeds.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[m50d]

No, it was going to be true push. RSS only uses a polling mechanism because of the thousands of idiots who think NAT and firewalls are a good idea. There are protocols in place for real push tech, and it would work better than the current RSS model.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[dmorin]

Hey wow look! It's a brand new wheel! It's round like the old one, and goes round and round like the old one.

Actually by your very argument, this comment is irrelevant. The "don't re-invent the wheel" argument works in situations where you already had a perfectly valid, working solution. But you're arguing that the original push concept sucked. Therefore it does indeed deserve to be reinvented, if possible, in a better way.

Very rarely is any specific technology so revolutionary that it brings with it all new ideas and immediately catapults to the front of the pack and changes the world. You can't pick out one bit , place it in a vacuum, and say "Been done before, didn't work." The world around everybody changed. The original push notion, if I remember correctly was really pushed (ha!) at the corporate desktop with things like Pointcast.

But RSS is coming back into the mainstream because of the blog revolution, which is being driven by a very different audience, who will have very different standards for what they accept and what they reject. Advertising in RSS is a perfect example of changing ideology, not changing technology. You *can* do it. But most of the people who are receiving feeds right now simply won't let you do it, because they'll drop you. But that doesn't mean it can't technologically be done, or that it won't ultimately find a home.

The better question to be asking right now isn't whether it will happen, but rather what form it will take. Good ideas never die, especially when there's a chance they can make money for somebody. Resistance isn't necessarily futile, it just helps evolve the idea into a palatable implementation.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[Peter La Casse]

RSS only uses a polling mechanism because of the thousands of idiots who think NAT and firewalls are a good idea.

Do you mean to imply that someone who thinks NAT and firewalls are a good idea is an idiot? (I realize that's not what you actually said.)

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[maximusind]

thousands of idiots who think NAT and firewalls are a good idea

Am I reading that as intended? The author of the post thinks NAT and Firewalls are unnecessary???

I hope I just missed a sarcasm tag up there...

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't understand. Did "push" allow for people to chose which part of a subscription to use or not use?

I think the problem with push was that it wasn't open, and seemed to be designed to force information and commercial interest to users, rather than giving letting users chose what to take. The RSS system seems to be a lot more open and truly designed to benefit the user from the user's perspective rather than from the perspective that is pro-commercial content producers. The basic idea may be the same but this one's implementation seems to be more palatable and useful.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[FuzzyFox]

Am I an idiot because I want to use more than one computer, even though my ISP only gives me ONE IP? Am I an idiot because I want to keep myself from being infected by the literally hundreds of thousands of zombie computers roaming the internet on a constant basis? NAT is a good idea. Firewalls are a good idea. I'm smart enough to configure my firewall to let traffic in, if anyone had a decent push mechanism that I wanted to allow in. I can even direct that traffic to the primary box within my NAT environment where I want that push traffic received. But where is this "real push tech" you speak of, and does it actually push anything useful to me?

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[SquadBoy]

The difference is that I have Snownews installed on my OpenBSD box. I am now able to, in a few minuts and in a format that I really like, get my news from just about anyplace on the planet.

It makes getting news in 5 minutes at a kiosk in Narita or Changi dead easy and much faster than looking at the sites in question.

That and last I looked you could not do fun things like this with the old push stuff either.

So yeah it may be a similar idea but the big difference is that this time implemantions don't suck.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[m50d]

I'd say anyone who thinks they're a good idea for home users is an idiot. I don't have enough experience in corporate networks to judge there.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[m50d]

Yes. Why do you need them? Either because your TCP stack has a bug, which given how simple they are means you would have been able to get a better one if you had any sense, or because you're running unnecessary services, which means either you're an idiot who turned on a bunch of unnecessary services, or you bought an OS that ships with a bunch of unnecessary services on, in which case you're an idiot for buying it.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[m50d]

Am I an idiot because I want to use more than one computer, even though my ISP only gives me ONE IP?

No, but being NATed is still a bad idea, and you should expect to have reduced functionality on the second comptuer.

Am I an idiot because I want to keep myself from being infected by the literally hundreds of thousands of zombie computers roaming the internet on a constant basis?

No, but you're an idiot if you think NAT or a firewall is the best way to do that.

Firewalls are a good idea. I'm smart enough to configure my firewall to let traffic in, if anyone had a decent push mechanism that I wanted to allow in.

But it takes a load of effort, and shouldn't be necessary. What if it uses random ports?

But where is this "real push tech" you speak of, and does it actually push anything useful to me?

Mostly in research labs, and no it doesn't, because there are so many people with nat and/or firewalls that don't know how to allow traffic through or direct it to their primary box (Nowadays almost every windows user has a firewall running) that such a technology couldn't succeed on the "real" internet. I've seen papers on how RSS could be better as a true push technology (there was even a /. story about it I think) but with so many firewalled "grandmother" users, it will stay nothing more than a research interest.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[maximusind]

Yes. Why do you need them? Either because your TCP stack has a bug, which given how simple they are means you would have been able to get a better one if you had any sense, or because you're running unnecessary services, which means either you're an idiot who turned on a bunch of unnecessary services, or you bought an OS that ships with a bunch of unnecessary services on, in which case you're an idiot for buying it.

I read this as, "if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be on the internet, and when that is the case, firewall and NAT technology is unnecessary." Feel free to correct me if I misunderstand, but:

1. That's not the case. Everybody and their grandmother is on the internet. That means that if ISPs didn't NAT their customers, we'd have run out of IP addresses (IPv4 at least) years ago.

2. Your network stack is only part of the concern. Any applications you're running must be flawlessly written, as well.

3. You state that things SHOULD work one way, and that NAT/firewall users are idiots for coping with how things DO work? I don't follow that logic.

Part of my thinks this is ignorance, and part thinks it's trolling.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[maxpublic]

No, but you're an idiot if you think NAT or a firewall is the best way to do that.

A combination of NAT and firewall, along with some simple common sense (e.g., don't use IE, don't run executables you get in th email) is a pretty effective way to keep your machine from getting infected with malware or turned into a zombie. Why anyone would argue against a NAT/firewall combination as part of this solution is beyond me.

Max

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[sleighb0y]

NAT and firewalls, not a good idea? Can you please elaborate on why NAT and firewalls are a bad idea for home users?

I'm sure everyone who sees all the crap traffic infected home windows systems create on networks would disagree.
Connecting your desktop directly to the Internet is very 1998, it is a bad idea.

Dial-up or broadband should use NAT with a firewall setup, always.
You're really asking for trouble otherwise.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[m50d]

I read this as, "if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be on the internet, and when that is the case, firewall and NAT technology is unnecessary."

Not really. If you don't know what you're doing you're still fine without NAT or firewalls, unless your OS maker turns on a load of pointless services by default.

1. That's not the case. Everybody and their grandmother is on the internet. That means that if ISPs didn't NAT their customers, we'd have run out of IP addresses (IPv4 at least) years ago.

I don't think that's the case, and if it is it just means we'd have moved to IPv6 sooner.

2. Your network stack is only part of the concern. Any applications you're running must be flawlessly written, as well.

If the applications are serving anything, then it makes no sense to block them off. If they aren't, why are they listening at all?

3. You state that things SHOULD work one way, and that NAT/firewall users are idiots for coping with how things DO work? I don't follow that logic.

I never said anything about how it should work. How it is is there is no way to externally connect to an application unless it is listening on a port. If an application is listening on a port, either it's needed, in which case it is stupid to firewall it off, or it isn't needed, in which case it's stupid to be running it. The only way you can be affected without running an application that's listening is with a TCP stack flaw, and given how small and closely audited most TCP stacks are, a vulnerability in your firewall program like the one that got people running blackice nailed is probably more likely than one in your TCP stack (when was the last time you saw such a flaw?), and one in your nat router is just as likely, it may well be running the exact same tcp stack. All of those are simple facts.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[m50d]

NAT and firewalls, not a good idea? Can you please elaborate on why NAT and firewalls are a bad idea for home users?

Sure. They make it much harder for people to publish their own content, which as a whole makes them more dependent on big media companies. We have wikipedia, but that relies a lot on donated hardware, and you can go into more detail on your specialist subject with you're own website. Even if they're not the type to produce something themselves, they could help by participating in more peer-to-peer things, like acting as a server for shoutcast streams. Of course you can still do these things, but it takes extra effort and knowledge that most users are simply incapable of. I'm sure more of this type of thing would be available if ordinary users participated more - perhaps wikipedia and similar could run a few pages on every user, saving their bandwidth and diskspace a bit (obviously the main server would have to have the official copy, but users could act like a more intelligent version of their squid servers).

I'm sure everyone who sees all the crap traffic infected home windows systems create on networks would disagree.

That happens anyway, it's the fault of windows far more than direct connection.

Connecting your desktop directly to the Internet is very 1998, it is a bad idea.

I'm sitting here on my home desktop which is in the DMZ on my router (I'm connected to a router simply because it was the easiest way to get a working ADSL connection under linux). It's fine, haven't been infected unless by someone very subtle, and allows me to run my apache server, shoutcast server, etc much more easily.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[sleighb0y]

Peer-to-peer sharing content, shoucast, apache, etc.. thats a server in my mind, and I don't waste resources with desktop stuff on servers. Nor would I host anything I cared about on a typical home connection, I just happen to have 100Mbps fiber to the home, so I run my own services.

I think of "home users" as the 90-some percent of users who run windows and use the Internet to browse, email or maybe games. If you're running linux on your desktop and want to do that sort of stuff you're not a "home" user in my mind and i'll assume that your boxes have host-based firewalls setup, so yes, no need for NAT for you.

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[m50d]

Peer-to-peer sharing content, shoucast, apache, etc.. thats a server in my mind, and I don't waste resources with desktop stuff on servers.

Many (most?) home users only have the one box, so it will have to wear both hats. A modern machine is more than capable of running services in the background, and the Internet would be much better if everyone did.

Nor would I host anything I cared about on a typical home connection

It isn't much by itself perhaps, but they add together. If everyone serves what they can, it's better than only those who think they have the power serving.

I think of "home users" as the 90-some percent of users who run windows and use the Internet to browse, email or maybe games. If you're running linux on your desktop and want to do that sort of stuff you're not a "home" user in my mind

All I do most of the time is email and browsing the web, a bit of usenet and the occasional P2P download or game. I'm more knowledgeable perhaps, but my use is (I'd say) pretty typical.

i'll assume that your boxes have host-based firewalls setup

Not generally. I deliberately disabled ipchains (or is it iptables, whatever) because I never bother sorting it. I do have an SMB share which only accepts local connections, but that's a servery thing and not something the one-computer home user is going to need. Everything else is accepting connections from everywhere (It's nice to be able to SSH home). Haven't had any problems yet (well, a bit of slowdown once when I had that SMB share open as people tried dictionary attacks, a complaint to the ISP sorted that. I realise the typical user is not likely to be able to sort such things though).

Re:The return of the Push Internet...

[shokk]

I think the new RSS wheel finally wins this one. I never got into IE Channels or Pointcast because it was all about geewhiz graphics and not enough about the content. Now I subscribe to 60+ feeds, which I read through Feed On Feeds which I always keep in the first tab of Firefox (thanks, Mini-T). The feeds are exactly what I want: only one inserts advertisement-only content (SpaceDaily through that damn NewsIsFree), the other handful that advertise are smart enough to use Google RSS adverts.

RSS will not replace mailing lists.. or forums

[Gopal.V]

RSS is purely one-way communication. It's like that locked newsboard in the cafeteria and quite unlike the refrigerator with magnets.

RSS will work for announcements - which is what it's being used for. Mainly news, notifications and other random communication. Or more correctly content distribution via a pull model. You can rest assured that RSS along will not create a community like the blogosphere. It needed readers and commentors to make it work. See slashdot for example - I read it purely for the comments (like that old playboy T Shirt).

Stuff like RssTorrents or Yahoo maps using GeoRss. Face it people, RSS could be the usenet of the modern world - but there's a catch - you can't post !!.

Re:RSS will not replace mailing lists.. or forums

[Pxtl]

That's solved the same as elsewhere - with a web front-end. A coupled RSS-feed and web-front would be a fine way to run a nice hybrid between a web-forum and an IRC chat. You'd get Fark threads from hell.

Re:RSS will not replace mailing lists.. or forums

[BewireNomali]

That's the point. I think they plan on using RSS for blogs. You'll RSS corporate blogs to establish relationships with individuals representing corporations and the corporations themselves.

It will be a blogosphere, but a corporate to consumer paradigm as opposed to a gazillion long term bloggers.

Point to note, many early adopter bloggers I know of no longer blog.

corporations can blog forever. they need to innovate to stay pertinent, so as long as the company is viable, so is its blog.

Re:RSS will not replace mailing lists.. or forums

[vinohradska]

Point to note, many early adopter bloggers I know of no longer blog.

And many people who start pen and paper diaries on January 1st, have nothing to say more than "I ate pasta for lunch today" by January 5th.

Pointcast

[Webs 101]

As RSS has risen in prominence, the only thing I have been able to think of is how hard the folks behind the defunct "push" company PointCast must be kicking themselves.

Re:Pointcast

[Anonymous Coward]

We talk about this all the time! What ever happenned to those guys anyways?

RSS Future Is Not Blogs, Eh?

[vain gloria]

Asa Dotzler must be damn pleased to be ahead of the game.

WHORE

[Anonymous Coward]

hey whore hows the whoring?

the site seems perfectly speedy to me...

wrong assumption

[Gothmolly]

The inherent capacity for consumers to select the content they wish to receive will be the driving mechanism for keeping advertisements to a minimum and content quality consistent.

Except that this is the opposite of what most media-driven corporations are about. They want you to see ALL the ads, to the point where they want to make it illegal to skip over them.

Typically, they don't care so much about the QUALITY of the content, but its CONSISTENCY. Any decent webfarm can do that.

Look at Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Sony. They want to bombard you with ads, over and over again, forever. They're not going to allow you to select only the ads with the hot chicks, or turn ads off after 9pm.

Re:wrong assumption

[ScentCone]

They're not going to allow you to select only the ads with the hot chicks, or turn ads off after 9pm

Sure they are (they don't really have a choice)! Just don't patronize blogs or other free resources that support ad models you don't like (like overpowering Pepsi placement, or similar). There - they're turned off. The ol' invisible hand will find the sweet spot, and feedback to content providers telling them that they're 10% more ads away from losing their audience will definately alter their cost/benefit analysis of which ads they run, what they charge the advertisers, and so on.

Re:wrong assumption

[Octagon Most]

"They're not going to allow you to select only the ads with the hot chicks, or turn ads off after 9pm."

Sure they will. In exchange for your permission to be exposed to advertising that is relevant, and your attention to it, smart marketers will reach you in the way you want to be reached. A single informative car ad the moment before you go out to shop for cars is worth more to the marketer than the past 500 ads they paid to run past everyone hoping for that moment of influence.

Re:wrong assumption

[Lord_Dweomer]

While I agree that they want you to see as much as possible, ultimately it is about getting ROI. And they are finding out fast that people are glossing over the bombardment and instead starting to really only be affected by the highly targeted, creative, and interactive ads.

Bombardments still have their place in the industry, but smart execs are realizing they get better bang for their buck by being more focused.

I feel I should also mention that I am an advertising exec, and that just about every report that has been done on the topic has backed up my claims, and while I'm too lazy to actually look them up, I'm sure a quick browse through Ad Age would have more than enough info on the subject.

Blogs and communication

[HMC CS Major]

You can use RSS as a communication medium within blogs. For example, I likely don't care about every blog entry posted by a certain user, but I may care about those that involve their new baby:

http://www.vobbo.com/feeds/search/tristen/rss.xml

By incorporating some intelligent thought into the XML generation process (in this case, arbitrary/dynamic feeds based on URL), you can get the great communication tool out of the blogging systems, too.

Re:What's the point?

[Golias]

Yeah... and since when did any corporation want to "minimize" our exposure to advertising.

They would gladly burn watermarks of their company logos into the corners of our vision if we were to let them do so.

Why?

[millahtime]

Why would media and advertising want people to choose their content? Don't they want to tell us what they want us to see? This doesn't seem to mesh with their game plan.

Re:Why?

[gfreeman]

No, they want to sell more of their clients' products, for less outlay. If you can target your most cost effective audience, you're more likely to make a profit in the changing, web-enabled landscape. Have a look at this Wired article, which explains. What appears to be counter-intuitive, makes sense.

Return Of The Son Of Push

[WombatControl]

Something about this reminds me of the bad old days of Active Desktop and Netcaster, "push" technologies that were supposed to revolutionize the way people worked on the Internet - and quickly faded into obscurity.

Corporate RSS can work, but it needs to be less annoying than push technologies were. The problem is that once RSS gets integrated into Longhorn everyone and the dog will use it just like "push" technologies - "pushing" annoying ads into everyone's faces and "pushing" the signal to noise ratio down into nothingness.

Re:Return Of The Son Of Push

[oscarm]

why is this insightfull. If a feed is full of noise/ads that it annoys you, wouldn't you unsubscribe? This is just complaining for complaining's sake.

Re:Return Of The Son Of Push

[samael]

So don't subscribe!

I subscribe to around 50 different feeds, ranging from comics to news, and nobody made me sign up to any of them! If they stop being interesting, or start pushing obtrusive ads I'll drop them like any other information resource I don't want.

Re:Return Of The Son Of Push

[jokercito]

But you overlooked the obvious advantage, you can turn off annoying channels. If you don't want some content channel because it's filling up with advertisement crap you don't care about you simply shut it off. It's off your universe. That's a lot of power to wield.

Anyway, setting up a new distribution channel is relatively easy so that the powers that be can easily be kept at bay by the little guy producing quality stuff with a minimum of advertisements. That is another HUGE plus and serves as a check and balance to the power of traditional content providers who got so big due precisely to the fact that to get into tradicional distribution channels is enormously expensive. That barrier is gone and the field is level. It's time to produce quality content or die miserably.

What they're trying to say

[Henry V .009]

RSS is the new spam.

Re:What they're trying to say

[scrotch]

I agree. But it won't last.

With email spam, a business has your email address (think large opt-in companies rather than viagra selling spam worms). They can potentially use your email address to find out more about you - where you live, what you earn, and other demographic information. That lets them target ads to you. You get ads more likely to make you act the way they want you to.

With RSS feeds, they know nothing about you (except an IP address at best). They can't target you. They don't know who they are. If you don't come back to the feed because you drop your subscription, they don't know why... Actually, they don't even know that. They don't know what the turnover is. They have no way of gauging the effectiveness of the feed. They can tell how often it's accessed, but there's little to no accurate way they can tell what drives sales.

You can do that with email, just as you can with physical mail. You send one version to half of your accounts, and another version to the other half. Watch your sales and see who buys more.

Does anyone think big business will buy in to a model with no feedback for the long term?

Re:What they're trying to say

[m50d]

They can use a redirector or parameter to tell how many hits on the URL are from RSS, like the ?from=rss slashdot uses. Then have the server use a straightforward tracking cookie or link it to that person's existing one, and voila (sp?).

Re:What they're trying to say

[SnapShot]

This is a good point. Despite all of the talk of "push" technology RSS isn't really pushed. It's an automated pull technology. When you "subscribe" to an RSS feed the only thing you are really doing is telling your application (the RSS reader or aggregator) to go to a specific URL and download the XML content that can be found there.

In other words your subscription to an RSS feed is roughly analogous to bookmarking a popular web page.

There are, of course, mechanism where attributes of the RSS feed can tell the reader how often to access the URL automatically (e.g. the RSS 0.91 skipDays or RSS 2 ttl tags) but that's really controlled on the client. 20 minutes with Perl or Ruby and you can write yourself a RSS reader that ignores these tags and queries once a minute or once every 20 days.

Re:What they're trying to say

[MartinB]

You can do that with email, just as you can with physical mail. You send one version to half of your accounts, and another version to the other half. Watch your sales and see who buys more.

Close, except for the volumes. As long as both samples are large enough to give statistically significant results, you don't need to do half and half.

Typically, you'd have an existing champion ad, and produce a variation in one (and only one) element of targeting, timing or content (etc) (and note that content is usually among the *least* significant of the testable elements) which you'd test with a small sample. If the challenger beats the champion to statistically significant levels, you crown the challenger as the new champ.

Or, if you've got a large enough budget and testable universe, and no existing champion, you might test a portfolio of variations.

Re:What they're trying to say

[Jon Abbott]

I think you're missing something. The way that companies can make RSS work for their customers is to provide customizable RSS feeds based on user-specified criteria. That way, for example, somebody could receive a customized RSS feed from Lands' End when new XL blue sweaters are released. Netflix could notify you when sci-fi movies originally released between 1978 and 1980 become available. You can't get any more customized than that! I think it would be great to be notified when products that match my exacting specifications are available. You would transcend mass marketing and create truly personalized advertising with this approach.

The problem I foresee is that with so many different ways to present RSS information, the message could be distorted. In Firefox for example, you just see the title of the article as a bookmark. Safari shows both the title, message text and images in a browser-like fashion. I think once IE gets onboard we will move towards a standard RSS interface which will allow marketers to fully leverage the technology.

RSS for advertising

[scrotch]

So, the author (who sells RSS software) suggests that companies create PR/advertising feeds and that people will sign up for them? Interesting. Not very different from email lists except that customers could actually unsubscribe. Great for the customers, and legit opt-in businesses stop looking like spammers. I don't think I'll be signing up for them, but I'm sure someone will want to subscribe to Best Buy's marketing list.

But that's totally different than most blogs. Blogs are about self-publishing for people that don't create full websites. They're not for advertising a business unless the business can't afford a cheap webmaster.

Blogs as content sources and RSS as advertising feeds have totally different purposes. One won't replace the other, because they don't do the same thing.

And RSS won't help content publishers (like many bloggers and newspapers) because it circumvents advertising. Great for the customer, bad for the revenue stream. Unless you build so much trust and traffic through RSS that you get more traffic to your website. But how do you advertise the RSS feed to people that don't visit your website?

Personally, I don't see RSS being that revolutionary. But then I'm not selling it.

End rambling.

Re:RSS for advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Not very different from email lists except that customers could actually unsubscribe. Great for the customers, and legit opt-in businesses stop looking like spammers.

This is exactly why my company is starting to use RSS with some of their customers - it's like email lists, but easier to unsubscribe, potentially less intrusive... we're basically offering a secondary option in addition to email lists, so people can use one, the other, or both.

Re:RSS for advertising

[dmorin]

And RSS won't help content publishers (like many bloggers and newspapers) because it circumvents advertising.

RSS does not circumvent advertising, it's easy to drop an ad in an RSS feed. What you meant to say, I think, was that blogging circumvents advertising. Which has nothing to do with RSS as a delivery mechanism and everything to do with the ideology of the "it's my voice and I won't let it appear to be biased" authors.

Imagine, for a moment, the perfect ad targeted to the perfect audience. There's really nothing wrong with that. Advertising does work, in some forms but not others. Just the other day we were all talking about Tivo's new "send my personal info to ads of my choice" feature, which people admitted to liking in small doses.

Advertising has not yet worked for RSS for a few reasons, most notably because RSS is neither email nor web page and thus neither model will work. Since it has been done badly (in general) for both, people naturally assume that when you say "advertising in RSS" you mean "bad advertising."

But that's not necessarily true. You can't really spam an RSS feed, since only the people that want it will get it. It inherently honors all "unsubs" because people just stop going to get updates. So you can logically assume that everybody getting your message has at least a passing interest in the subject. Sure, I may be anonymous to you, you may not have my demographic and thus not know whether I like to take cruises or golf or just reread Harry Potter. But how different is that from television advertising where you have to take a guess at the demographics based on the show content itself?

I think RSS is indeed revolutionary because it changes web browsing from being on the site's terms and puts it on mine. I'm telling a given site, "You summarize for me what you've got to say, and if I'm interested, I'll come check it out. If you piss me off, I'll just drop your feed and you'll never darken my door again." Sure, the latter half of that statement can be true for regular websites that I'll just choose not to visit anymore, but the first part is the revolutionary bit. I can watch 50x more sites with RSS feeds than I can by individually navigating every single one of them.

Re:RSS for advertising

[scrotch]

-- And RSS won't help content publishers (like many bloggers and newspapers) because it circumvents advertising.

RSS does not circumvent advertising, it's easy to drop an ad in an RSS feed. What you meant to say, I think, was that blogging circumvents advertising. Which has nothing to do with RSS as a delivery mechanism and everything to do with the ideology of the "it's my voice and I won't let it appear to be biased" authors.

Actually, what I meant is that RSS is used to circumvent advertising. If you are able to watch 50x more sites with RSS than the web, that's because you're just looking at content. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, cause I only look at a couple of feeds. Right now RSS is a delivery mechanism for content and not advertising. You can scan so much content because you don't have to filter out advertisements, images, differing layouts, etc.

As soon as your RSS feeds get full of advertising, you'll find them much, much less useable. The consistent formatting that's a benefit now will make it that much harder to filter out advertisements. If that happens, you won't find RSS as useful. You'll use it less, dropping feeds with lots of ads. Those content providers will decide they can't make money using RSS and it will die out. Poverty will increase. Riots will break out. The economy as we know it will crumble.

Or what will happen is that smart RSS feeds will just have every link from the feed channelled through one of those full page ads before getting to the content you want to read. That'll be fun too.

Re:RSS for advertising

[Octagon Most]

"Right now RSS is a delivery mechanism for content and not advertising."

Advertising is content. It can be delivered through RSS just like the rest of the content you want. Smart RSS advertising will be narrowly targeted and unobtrusive. Blogs are a great medium for this because they themselves are narrowly targeted and have more actively engaged viewers than other forms of traditional media.

"You can scan so much content because you don't have to filter out advertisements, images, differing layouts, etc."

True. That's why RSS advertising can be successful. It necessarily will have to abandon the in-your-face model of multimedia banners and adopt the plain text format of the rest of the content. You won't despise the very site of it, it will be targeted to the interests of the readers of that blog/feed, and it will be low key enough to be deemed acceptable by the owner of the content who does not want to lose viewers.

Re:RSS for advertising

[dmorin]

Actually, what I meant is that RSS is used to circumvent advertising. If you are able to watch 50x more sites with RSS than the web, that's because you're just looking at content. Correct me if I'm wrong, please, cause I only look at a couple of feeds. Right now RSS is a delivery mechanism for content and not advertising. You can scan so much content because you don't have to filter out advertisements, images, differing layouts, etc.

Well, certainly half right - the bit about the differing layouts and stuff. The fact that all my site summaries appear in the same format for me (two columns, clickable header, "Read more.." link, etc...) is huge on that front.

But they can still have ads. Here, let me check something...a quick skim tells me that about 3 out of 12 have Google adwords in them. Doesn't kill me.

Let me ask you one, since you're keen to differentiate ads from content. If I say "Hey, Harry Potter was a good movie", is that an ad? What if I got paid behind the scenes to just push a certain product? What if I made "Harry Potter" a link? With an affiliate code? Where is the line drawn? Are you arguing against the concept of advertising, or about the obtrusiveness of the presentation? Is it only an ad if it is in an offset box in a different color and font? Is it only a tv commecial if the screen goes black for a second first, and then comes up in a different segment? Or when a tv character says "Is that Campbell's soup, mom?"?

As soon as your RSS feeds get full of advertising, you'll find them much, much less useable.

As soon as your television channels get full of advertising, you'll find them much, much less useable. Some things end up self-regulating. If nobody watches it because of the advertising, then the value of the advertising falls through the floor and there is less advertising.

There's a difference between what is technically possible, what you fear might happen, and what ultimately does happen.

Maybe you're right, maybe there will be a period where RSS gets so swamped with advertising that we all bail out on it until some other technology comes along to fix the problem. Just like we all hated the "This site optimized for IE" era and the wonderful X10 popups. But those didn't kill the web, they just surfaced for a time and then died back out as technology addressed the problem.

Re:RSS for advertising

[scrotch]

Advertising is content.

I work in the publishing industry and around here, advertising is definitely NOT content. Advertising piggybacks on content (news stories, editorial, etc.) to reach viewers in exchange for money because viewers wouldn't bother with it otherwise.

But what we call it is beside the point. If your RSS feed fills up with stuff you don't want to read, you're going to drop it. And then neither the feed nor the advertiser are going to be successful. Imagine if the ads on your favorite blogs or news sites weren't off to the side, but were right in line with the news. It would be terrible, and that's exactly what RSS ads will look like: exactly the same as the content.

And you can drop an RSS feed easily, without missing content, by going straight to the blog's website. The RSS feed isn't just competing with other content providers, it's competing with the exact same content on the web. If the RSS delivery is harder to use than the web delivery, why wouldn't you just go to the website?

RSS feeds don't have the popularity yet to accommodate much advertising. They will not become popular unless they provide a benefit over the website. Right now, a large part of their benefit is that they don't have ads. Take that away, and you've got little left to convince the public to adopt and learn a new technology.

Re:RSS for advertising

[scrotch]

Please forgive me for not answering each of your questions. The line between advertising and content is getting blurrier and blurrier. I consider any element that is paid for (in cash or trade) an advertisement.

But more importantly:
Are you arguing against the concept of advertising, or about the obtrusiveness of the presentation?

I am NOT arguing against advertising. My company relies on it. I would like it to be as clearly distinguished from unpaid content as possible, but I know that ain't happening all the time.

I think RSS - specifically RSS - could be hurt by too much advertising too soon. RSS feeds carry links and summaries of content available elsewhere. To be useful and used, it has to have some advantage over just going to the website that the feed links to. Right? It does now - it's quick, easy to scan, you get just the parts of the site you want. Advertising could ( that's "could" not "will") destroy those advantages. Or just degrade them enough to forestall adoption of RSS readers. Without the advantages, there's no reason for people to favor RSS over the web. It won't kill you, but there could come a point where it's just as much of a hassle to scan through the RSS as it is to visit the sites.

That's different than television, because you (or let's say 95% of the country) can't get television anywhere else. Television can get a lot more annoying because you can't just turn on the radio and get the same show.

Maybe a better analogy is the website is television and RSS is the TV Guide channel or similar listing. Here, the TV Guide channel shows ads at the top of the screen and the content - listings - at the bottom. I can tune out the ads. If the ads were inline with the content, a la RSS, I wouldn't be able to tune them out as easily. It would become annoying. And because I could easily find the same information somewhere else, I'd go somewhere else. I hope I'm making sense. The TV Guide channel, and RSS have to be less annoying because they're supposed to be convenient ways to find out about something else. If they're not convenient, there's no longer any point.

Am I making more sense? Maybe not.

Re:RSS for advertising

[dmorin]

The TV Guide channel, and RSS have to be less annoying because they're supposed to be convenient ways to find out about something else. If they're not convenient, there's no longer any point.

Makes perfect sense, although I would probably lean more on the "must be more useful/efficient" rather than "less annoying", but the end result is the same. But you're seeing just plain old web browsing as the alternative if RSS is too annoying, and I'm seeing it as the opposite -- I already find the regular web too annoying and look to RSS to be the solution. RSS already offers me enough bonus in terms of structure and consistency that I've made the switch. There are times when you need to go back to the web itself (like for Slashdot comments), but the whole browsing/surfing thing has changed.

New analogy. Imagine that you're commuting to work, and all you have is the radio. You're coming up on the major highway split and you want to check the traffic. You have no idea when the channel that you're listening to will do traffic. But you know that another channel does "traffic on the 3's", and it's 8:02, so you put that channel on and get the traffic report. Structured and consistent is more useful to you than "We'll give you the information on whatever terms we decide."

Now, what if that traffic report starts out and ends with a simple "This traffic report brought to you by Pepsi. Ice-cold, refreshing Pepsi. Try one today." Did it make the information less useful, or more annoying? Annoying enough to not use that channel of information anymore? Not for me. At least, not yet.

For the real bonus brain teaser, how do you know that I'm not part of a grass roots campaign paid for by Pepsi who just snuck an ad in on you? Ha! ;)

ISP, News, and more.

[barik]

RSS can be quite useful for IT and other administrative notifications. My ISP, Pair, for example, uses RSS maintenance feeds to notify customers about about outages, maintenance, or other known problems.

RSS is serving as a vehicle for other communication mediums as well, like mailing lists and newsgroups. Gmane, another service that I use quite frequently, provides RSS feeds for their technical newsgroups.

And finally, RSS is already used by most major news agencies, such as Yahoo, the BBC, New Scientist, New York Times, and so on.

Re:ISP, News, and more.

[Octagon Most]

"My ISP, Pair , for example, uses RSS maintenance feeds to notify customers about about outages, maintenance, or other known problems."

Your ISP uses RSS feeds to notify you of outages? That's a great idea. I think the power company should do the same thing.

Blogosphere attacked!

[generic-man]

Coming up on Slashdot: noted blog pundits and blogebrities alike blog their blogs out about this news that the blogosphere might be bloginalized! Blogs everywhere rise up in blogtest against this antiblog corporate movement to co-blog-opt RSS!

TrackBack (1)

This comment TrackBacked by buy c1ali$ now
buy c1ali$ now blogosphere

Re:Blogosphere attacked!

[Anonymous Coward]

Comment by free online poker

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Re:Blogosphere attacked!

[CapnGrunge]

Blogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.

The most usfull thing I have found for RSS is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Recruiting sites. I am looking for a new job at the moment as my company starts off shoring. RSS with recuriting is great. I can setup searches for jobs in my area and have them updated daily

Biased What?

[vethia]

I'd be skeptical of the opinion of anyone who wrote an article to promote his or her own business. This article is published on a site that sells RSS feed creation services. The author is also the site's marketing director, as is clearly stated in her bio. The article is just one big ad for this site's product.

Re:Biased What?

[dupont54]

Mod parent up.
This article is nothing more than a pre-sale speech.

1) Create the need
2) Show products that fulfill the needs
3) Profit$$$

However I think the marketing guy should change its title. It's only provoking bloggers, but do not immediately lead potential purchasers in thinking "Hey, I can make $$$ with RSS and those guy's tools".

I don't buy it

[cthrall]

because some corporate RSS feed says it's good. If I skip ads with Tivo and use Firefox to block ad popups, why would I consciously read a corporate RSS feed (aka ad)?

I read some corporate blogs, like Raymond Chen and Larry Osterman at MSFT, because it's very high quality information for free. It doesn't change my opinion of MSFT, which is pretty neutral to begin with, it just helps me understand Windows development...which helps me do my job.

Re:I don't buy it

[negativeview]

RSS does not automatically equate to ads. Sure, it can be used that way. But there is no reason that there can't be an RSS feed of those same Windows developers with the exact same content.

Is it revolutionary and significant enough of a difference from what you already have to warrant the hype that it sometimes gets? No.

Is it any more of a spam-haven than the same webpages you already admit to viewing have the potential to be? No.

Advertisements to a minimum?

[kryptx]

Already RSS feeds themselves contain advertisements. I subscribe to at least three which have advertisements either in HTML in the feed, or as a feed item itself. Advertising isn't going to be a victim of RSS, in fact RSS seems to be just another method of advertising.

Re:What's the point?

[Luscious868]

Yeah... and since when did any corporation want to "minimize" our exposure to advertising.

Since the very beginning of advertising. Do you really think corporations enjoy throwing money away on advertising that isn't reaching their target audience or is otherwise ignored? If corporations can cut advertising costs by focusing their advertising dollars on those channels most likely to reach receptive consumers in their target audience, they'll jump at the chance.

Spam spam spam

[hexed_2050]

Until people stop replying to the medication ads, and the scammers, spam will continue to multiply and add itself to many different communication streams.

We must begin to boycott these types of unwanted spam. Once this happens, the spam will begin to get worse, but then they will realise that people have adapted and they must adapt with them, providing targetted spam to potential clients.

Yes, the problem must get worse before it gets better.

Re:Spam spam spam

[burymore]

> We must begin to boycott these types of unwanted spam.

We have begun. We have made huge strides. We have even invented automated tools to help us boycott these types of (redundantly) unwanted spam. My email provider boycotts hundreds a day for me; my MUA boycotts dozens more; my delete button never tires.

The real problem is that we have to finish boycotting spam, or we don't win! When we boycott Safeway, we only have to keep, say, 10% of their customers out, and they capitulate. But we can, and probably do, keep 99.995% of spam-recipients from responding, and still it's profitable.

Was the same for torrents and mp3s..

[Anonymous Coward]

"businesses that were initially reluctantly evaluating RSS are beginning to realize the power and benefit of the RSS information avenue."

Just a few days ago we had the same story about Torrents. 5 years too late the music companies are finally jumping all over downloadable mp3s. It seems axiomatic that business is generaly too sluggish, too cautious and years behind the technology curve.
That is a sorry state for any business to be in, ruled by internal fears, conservativism and tired old shareholder interests. Business should innovate, not be hanging on the coat tails of the free software movement because they are too brain dead to run with an obviously good idea when it comes shouting in their faces. If our companies in the USA and UK can't pull their fingers out and start competing like we mean it then we deserve to lose our place in the world.

Author gets it - not.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not that business is the future of RSS (because blogs can't make money). Cynically grabbing and "re-purposing" [rinses, spits] RSS content created elsewhere will only get you so far.

The article was written from the point of view of the SEO crowd, who spend all their time figuring out how to *appear* to be something other people want. They see RSS as a way to cherry-pick content produced by others. They think it's a free resource, which on the one hand they'll build their business model on and on the other hand say can't possibly survive (since no one will produce for free).

In the long run, they'd be better off finding out what people want, making it themselves, and giving it to them.

Oh well, such is the American economy. It's all a sham.

So this article is the future of advertising?

[Scott Laird]

Let's see--it's an article on how RSS is the future of business communication, hosted on a site that sells business RSS services, written by the site's owner, and submitted to Slashdot by the author.

Then fed to me via Slashdot's RSS feed.

Yep, that's the future of advertising via RSS if I ever saw it.

Re:So this article is the future of advertising?

[dupont54]

submitted to Slashdot by the author Making money through RSS made simple: just post your ad on an blog and voila, free RSS ads (only works on poorly administered blogs, though).

Re:So this article is the future of advertising?

[Anonymous Coward]

This post wins the thread.

Re:So this article is the future of advertising?

[Otter]

...and then CmdrTaco, the Father Of The Weblog, files it in the "so-sick-of-blogs dept."...

Budgeting For RSS

[buckhead_buddy]

RSS subscription is one of the few techniques that can make people interested in subscribing to press releases or offer up enough order to the large amount of self-promotoion, spam, and junk mail that marketing departments churn out on a daily basis like used toilet paper.

The only people interested in the scatter-shot "show me everything from this company's PR department" are the people who are absurdly interested in the company.

• Zealots/Fanatics - For example, Apple fans (of which I'm probably one)
• Investors/Day Traders - Watching every scrap of news for the signal to buy or sell
• Directors/Managers - The people evaluating the PR department's efforts with an untrained eye

RSS feeds the fans only if the business has fans and zealots already. While Hasbro, Apple, and Starbucks have a disturbingly large group of fans who would be intereseted in every PR droplet released, I doubt the Clorox company would pick up a similar RSS fanbase.

Personally, I see this as a way for PR departments to demand for budget money to pave a new yellow brick road for their company. This kind of threat to CFO's worked well prior to Y2K to demand budget expansions on this new "web" thing. It worked back in the 80's when desktop publishing made every company put out "Newsletters" even for the most absurd of businesses. Now RSS is the new technique that will be used to justify expanded technical budgets and more money for writing even more useless content and masturbatory articles of self-promotion.

Re:What's the point?

[millennial]

Mozilla Thunderbird has RSS capabilities. You can receive and browse them as if they were e-mail messages.

Perfect vehicle for PodCasting

[RickySan]

Use a tool like WebPod Studio (http://www.lionhardt.ca/wps/) and you can see what RSS can do if applied within reason

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent up, as grandparent is a real karma whore; the site hosting the article is not slow at all (and I'm in Great Britain).

RSS will replace the newswire, not much else...

[analog_line]

...because that's really what RSS allows you to do, run your own newswire.

It isn't a brand new medium in the least. What it does that is new, is make it easier for individuals to access "press releases" (in quotes, because with RSS and the like the press is rarely the target, the whole idea is customers reading this crap themselves) that previously only appeared on the various business PR newswire services.

RSS is about reaching a wider audience

[B11]

And not only on other websites, but also on other devices.

I think this too will be eventually be spoiled by "RSS Spam," with only a couple of news/information sites left after the dust clears.

Of course this may be a viable communication tool for intra-corporate communication, being able to broadcast company "news" or other communications to employee/client computers, cellphones, blackberries, what-have-you.

RSS is a retarded waste of bandwidth.

[Anonymous Coward]

The topic pretty much says it all.

RSS is a retarded waste of bandwidth. Honestly the more people who implement it, the faster it will fail.

Atom may ultimately be more attractive

[Mordant]

for automated publish/subscribe models because it's an actual standard.

RSS is more hype

[Virtual Karma]

RSS is more of a hype than anything else. What exactly do you understand by RSS? Its nothing but a structure that we have all agreed upon, to publish information. What makes it work is the acceptance. I can write code to extract information from a RSS document (basically XML) knowing that every RSS document will have the same structure. Now if instead of RSS it was some comma seperated file that we all accepted as the standard, my scripts will work in similar fashion. Instead of the title tag my script will look for the first value in each line. Instead of description tag my script will look for the second value in each line. So RSS is nothing more than a standard that we all have accepted.

Please dont get me wrong. As the author of Newster.net (yeah yeah.. this is shameless advertising) I really appreciate the establishment of such a standard. The standard is what makes the site work. My point is that RSS is very simple and sweet, and should be perceived and interpreted that way. Its a standard and not rocket science...

Re:RSS is more hype

[baadger]

Exactly. It's just like all the other standards out there. It's only as useful as what it was designed to be used for. ...oh wait.

Re:RSS is more hype

[djeaux]

RSS is more of a hype than anything else. What exactly do you understand by RSS? Its nothing but a structure that we have all agreed upon, to publish information.

Kinda reminds me of the early days of the web. Remember all the hype surrounding HTML? RSS is relatively new & it's getting a lot of attention, hence, hype. I suspect that the "very simple and sweet" RSS standard will get more complicated just as soon as some folks discover they can make more money if only highly trained specialists can do the work. (It's already on its way, IMO.)

Re:RSS is more hype

[m50d]

Any standard would work, but a standard was needed. The great leap was the idea of introducing a simple standard for only sending headlines and summaries. Think about it for a second. In the current world of ever "richer" web media content, what would be the first thing on someone introducing a complementary protocol's mind. Probably how to get flash working on it. It was a real insight that having a one liner and a URL for more is a very useful thing to do, most people would think such things are so trivial as to not be worth making a protocol for.

Re:RSS is more hype

[AttilaB]

RSS is more of a hype than anything else. ... Its nothing but a structure that we have all agreed upon, to publish information.

By that account one coudl say:
HTML is more of hype than anything else. Its nothing but a structure that we have all agreed upon, to display information.

It's not about the complexity of the technology. It's about what you can do with it.

Audio RSS Browser

[anthm]

Speaking of RSS, I just made a voice RSS Browser yesterday. The source code is available to download and the program will let you turn just about any RSS feed into an IVR in less than a minute. http://www.pbxfreeware.org/

Zonk would disagree

[The Hobo]

Seeing as he pushed story after story relating to blogs
Don't believe me? Look for the magic word in the following stories or their links
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve

There's probably more but I haven't figured out how to get my own complete listing of comments yet so this'll have to do for now

Re:Zonk would disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

So? People use blogs to communicate ya idiot. Of course they'll pop in slashdot stories.

Oh noes it's a B10g c0nsp1racy!2!

Advertising with RSS Isn't Hard

[jubei]

It wouldn't take much to insert advertising in RSS. Every third or fourth 'story' could be a link to an advertiser.

If you only inserted ads when new content was available, it wouldn't even annoy people very much, as it would not flag the channel for new content when there is only a new ad.

Re:Advertising with RSS Isn't Hard

[Anonymous Coward]

The Onion already does this.

Thank God!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully the future of ANYTHING is NOT blogs!

Can you imagine RSS feeds like "Today I had frozen waffles for breakfast... I have a huge crush on Alex... Like, OMGWTFLOL I have to clean up my room..."

Yawn

[ShatteredDream]

RSS is convenient for keeping track of news, but you'd think that these companies found a solution for Cold Fusion (nuclear physics, not the app server) with the way they tout it. Come on people, it's a XML stream that's updated with a little bit of programming/scripting magic, not something radical and new.

Blog up! (mod up)

[Augusto]

I blog this blogerific blogpost!

Blogs = Narcissism

[UberXY]

I for hope blogs have no future, because they sure have no value.

Re:What's the point?

[pete6677]

This would be assuming that they take the time to hire a reputable advertising firm, instead of a fly-by-night that just crapfloods their ads wherever they possibly can. Fortunately, I think corporate advertising departments are wising up to this kind of thing, since many companies recently realized their advertising agents were putting their ads into spyware apps.

You're Money and You Don't Even Know It

[Doc Ruby]

'"Coolness" often wears off if a channel is not monetized.'

Oh yeah? Or is it that if a thing really is "cool", it gets monetized (people get other people to pay for it), and things whose coolness wears off can't be monetized? Correlation is not causality, and it's a mistake to think that money is necessary for coolness. It's the other way around.

Re:You're Money and You Don't Even Know It

[Anonymous Coward]

Never trust anyone who uses the word "monetize".

Re:You're Money and You Don't Even Know It

[Doc Ruby]

What word(s) do you use to describe the transformation of a free transaction or operation into a paid one?

Suitwankers

[Anonymous Coward]

The story said that business is the future of RSS. I say, who cares what the suitwankers in the SEO crowd do?

Anybody can use RSS, not just spammers and SEO whores. If they pollute a feed with their suitwanking crap, I don't have to pick it up, now do I. And some bright nerd will figure out how to block it.

Life, and my pursuit of a spam-free net, goes on.

The Future is: Blogging for Aliens ;-)

[Digitaler Lumpensamm]

MindComet Launches BloginSpace.com: Free Service Transmits Blogs Into Space. "We strongly urge our users to refrain from language or content designed to provoke our alien neighbors. We hope that our bloggers understand the importance of keeping our message positive." http://www.mindcomet.com/press/pressreleases/2005/ bloginspace/ http://obacht.blogspot.com/

BLOGOSPHERE?

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg your pardon, but the proper term is "Blogiverse"!

These blogheads don't even bloggin know how to be bloggin clever when making up bloggin buzzwords.

To blog with it all.

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

His karma just ran over your blogma!

RSS is just the elegant solution for "push"

[doormat]

It seems that RSS is just "push" technology souped up and much more elegant (and open) than any of the other implementations made in the mid/late 90s. I would expect that more top-down organizations like big corporations would adopt this technology.

Re:RSS is just the elegant solution for "push"

[pclminion]

RSS is not a push technology.

Re:RSS is just the elegant solution for "push"

[doormat]

No but it sure does a good job of emulating one without all the ick "subscribing" crap.

Re:What's the point?

[turnstyle]

"Do you really think corporations enjoy throwing money away on advertising that isn't reaching their target audience or is otherwise ignored?"

Actually, that's wrong for a few reasons, most notably Goggle now offers AdSense for feeds. So, for example, that's just a pay-per-click model.

You'll *definitely* see more ads in feeds as others like Yahoo (nee Overture) offer similar services.

(disclosure: my new project Bitty Browser works with feeds)

If the whole current internet model went to hell..

[HBI]

Why would I care? Why would any geek care? The infrastructure is in place. The commercial vendors that drove it can go to hell at this point for all I care.

10 years ago we wanted the infrastructure investment. It's already done. I don't want their content, truthfully. The stuff on Usenet was interesting enough if I was concerned what other people thought.

Internet advertisers are selling me and my family _nothing_. If this causes them to disappear, great, i'm happy about it.

RSS internally

[kmanq]

A company I work for is using RSS internally. We developed a RSS feed for checkout status of certain high use items. It works quite well, saves a good bit of time from having to go across the building to see if the item is in use or not. Just take a look @ my Live Book mark in firefox and you have instant status.

RSS. email.

[donsaklad]

How do you use RSS with email ?...

Not Just Human-Readable Content

[JimmyStewart]

For corporate use, RSS does not have to contain just human-readable content. If the readers and publisher are in the same enterprise, you can (through suitable XML) use an RSS feed to distribute software updates or perform other IT functions.

RSS is easy to parse, easy to publish, and has many tools for manipulating it. This gives corporate IT departments a lovely framework to build upon.

authenticated RSS?

[rjnagle]

The answer is simple. Create an rss reader that first authenticates your membership so you can receive the feed.

That way, you get demographic information, possibly subscriptions and possibly some tracking mechanism for feed traffic.

Right now, rss feeds are open. How long will that last?

Re:What's the point?

[Paul Carver]

That's correct for any responsibly run business. Unfortunately that isn't all of them, but there are some.

I'm on the board of a non-profit community theatre and we haven't advertised in years, but we know we need to. The problem is that every penny counts and we can't afford to spend money on advertising to people who aren't interested. We can only afford to advertise if the advertisement is actually going to bring in enough additional money in ticket sales to cover the cost of the ad. (On average at least, obviously you can't predict the exact response to an ad down to the dollar.)

Sure, if a company has a multi-million or multi-billion dollar advertising budget and only loose controls on how the money is spent then self-satisfied advertising execs can generate crap ads that just piss people off. But overall companies hate wasting money, so it just comes down to control and feedback. I'm sure the advertising and marketing people love controlling a large budget with no accountability, but the top level management of the company would love to have accountability and prevent the advertising and marketing people from spending any dime that doesn't generate revenue. The problem is there isn't much ability for top management to do that.

jon katz

[Anonymous Coward]

...are you writing under an assumed id now?

RSS IVR

[bkw.org]

Check this out!

HTML

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets add html to RSS, that would make them even better, much like it did e-mail!

RSS is stupidly inefficient

[Anonymous Coward]

RSS is an inefficient protocol because it is POLLing and pulling the results.

RSS seems like mailing lists redone wrong. What is the advantage of RSS over a mailing list?

If one wants also a web rendering / presence of the mailing list there are plenty of handy dandy mailing list web archiving packages.

The future of RSS is transactional...

[dmorin]

Actually I'm far more impressed with the usefulness of RSS monitoring feeds for ebay, amazon, Fedex, etc... then I've ever been with news headlines. I see the logical leap (maybe not the next, but in the very near future) as getting us that much close to the concept of the personal agent who can monitor the state of various information sources and do our bidding.

Bear with me a second. There's already a movement underway to create "structured blogging" (which really needs a better name), and Microsoft already has a similar concept, where you attempt to state up front what is in an RSS item. So say that you're watching new movie releases at your local cinema, then you would be able to tell that each item might have title, stars, description, rating, and show times. It's really not hard to make that leap, it's the same argument people make now for the "Semantic Web" (and hopefully will be adopted quicker as we learn our lessons :)).

Great, so now I'm in a position to have a piece of software on my machine that is watching that feed for new movie releases. It sees that a new Shakespeare movie is opening this weekend, so it alerts me on my cell phone to this fact and asks for permission to go ahead and buy the tickets. Or maybe, if I have a properly enabled phone, it sends me a link where I can do it for myself. Like I said, this isn't going to happen tomorrow, but there's nothing technically stopping it.

Or how about a froogle watcher that keeps track of the average price on item X, and then knows that when it spots somebody offering more than 30% off that price, it goes ahead and buys it (again, or alerts me so I can do it). Even better, it spots it cheap, buys it and then immediately puts it up on ebay at a profit for automatic flipping.

Or a weather agent that sees, at 3am, that the hurricane has changed direction and is now headed straight for my hometown, so when I wake up at 7am there's a message waiting for me that maybe I should cancel my golf game.

Or a traffic monitoring agent that sees a truck has rolled over on Rt93 south, and tells my alarm clock to wake me up half an hour earlier so that I can take the backroads.

Is there anything special about RSS that enables any of what I just said? Nah, not really. It's more about the notion of polling information feeds and being able to automatically act on them. There's nothing new under the sun there. The question has always been one of technological adoption. You can't create the perfect technology and then tell the world "Why won't you use it!?! Use it now!" It has to prove itself, and grow over time. So if it takes going from blogs to RSS to Structured RSS to Smart Agents, I can wait.

Re:The future of RSS is transactional...

[not-enough-info]

...It sees that a new Shakespeare movie is opening this weekend, so it alerts me on my cell phone to this fact and asks for permission to go ahead and buy the tickets.
...when it spots somebody offering more than 30% off that price, it goes ahead and buys it (again, or alerts me so I can do it). Even better, it spots it cheap, buys it and then immediately puts it up on ebay at a profit for automatic flipping.

Yeah dude, they're called girlfriends... Oh, wait. Permission? That is a novel,useful idea!

oops. /. right. disregard.

Re:If the whole current internet model went to hel

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why are you posting on slashdot?

rssporn

[seramar]

If their rss feed is links to free porn, I'm totally there.

Whole Article is an Advert

[gregoryb]

About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com/ software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net/ a wireless text messaging software company.

The whole article is just a sort of advertisment for this company's RSS feed software. Just another example of companies pushing ad campaigns that look very similar to news stories. Bah!

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

But why, when I can just visit the sites I am interested in??? I have used RSS but I just don't see the point. I set it up in Firefox in the Bookmarks and it seemed like a complete waste of time. I guess I will try it in Thunderbird now. I don't read weblogs so maybe that is why it isn't useful to me.

Mmm, now that's some tasty marketing!

[sammy baby]

Okay, color me easily irritated, but read the bottom of the article:

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com/ software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net/ a wireless text messaging software company

So, as nearly as I can tell, the marketing director for a company called Feed For All, who in the past has posted exactly one comment on Slashdot, writes an article for the company she works for as marketing director, then submits a Slashdot story about it.

Look, if the submission had said something like, "Hey, we make software that makes RSS feeds, come see how we think the software can be used," it would be one thing. But this is just a stealth product advertisement, couched as a real article. It's basically astroturf, the kind of thing that people are thinking about when they talk about how much they hate marketing directors.

RSS for Popular Media Distribution

[ndansmith]

Or more correctly content distribution via a pull model.

I think that the recent fad of podcasting has tapped into an important avenue of RSS technology which I believe will become more important than simple blogs: Media content distribution. New technologies like BitTorrent make moving large files easier than every. When added to the automated process of RSS, and you have a very easy method for mass distribution of media. So podcasting is the first wave, but I believe we will see RSS feeds for ER and Dateline and Chapelle's Show as authorized distributions from their producers. The media will of course contain commercials. Still, RSS can become the engine for a new paradigm of media through the internet, beyond what is imagined by the linked article.

Short sighted

[NineNine]

Who do you think paid for all of this infrastructure? Bloggers? What you'll see disappear (and we've already seen this) is content *producers*. Once upon a time, there used to be all kinds of news articles generated for the Net. Now, most of what you see (with the exception of a few holdouts like Salon.com) is nothing but re-hashed AP and Reuters stories. Yeah, you may see the advertisers to disappear, but then so will the content. And if big advertisers find out that there's little to no money to be made online because of people like you, you can forget any more infrastructure development (like fiber to the door).

Re:Short sighted

[HBI]

There are two reasons why i'm not short sighted.

1. It's not like the whole thing is going to be shoved back into a closet even if all the commercial ventures flounder. The only thing we lose is the annoying advertising, and the annoying newbies who pollute the net with their spyware-driven spam - that they cannot remove.

2. Having fiber to my door does nothing good for me when all these idiots are filling that bandwidth with spam and scripted ssh login attempts.

With the demise of dial-up ISPs and ultimately AOL, this is the first opportunity to undo the muddying of the Internet.

I can't help wondering if spyware and spam aren't good things inasmuch as they are forces directly working against the commercialization of the net. I've roundly cursed both in the past. They do have an effect though: they decrease user comfort with security, and irritate the crap out of people. Same thing that annoying web ads do, actually. So much so that laymen withdraw from the net. This can't have positive consequences for advertisers or commercial ventures.

It will be quite sweet if they turn out to be the forces that ultimately restore the Internet to its proper function.

Re:Short sighted

[ScentCone]

It will be quite sweet if they turn out to be the forces that ultimately restore the Internet to its proper function.

You mean, peer-to-peer systems connectivity between people working on Cold War defense research contracts? I'm curious - what role are you playing in that arena?

Exhibit A

[k2enemy]

Wired Issue 5.03 (March 1997)

Cover Story

Really now?

[webgodjj]

There have been several "opinion" articles like this out there. Most really are just guesswork. I haven't seen many people give an ideas like this, implement it, then say "like this!" If the authors of these stories think they have the next big idea, take the time to put it to practice, then waste the time on an article.

Why future?

[kellererik]

I think RSS is a great and efficient way to relay information, the protocol should be in the toolbox of every SysAdmin, IMHO. If a SysAdmin needs to keep the users of certain services posted about the latest developments, he/she could simply set up an RSS-Feed to allow the users to subscribe to the information they are interested in, e.g. the availability of a cluster-system, or a generated feed showing the current load on a render-farm, etc.
The beauty of RSS is choice, if you are not interested in the information, do not subscribe to the channel.

RSS started mainly as a way to syndicate information like a wire-service, but the protocol allows to quickly generate a feed with some lines of Perl or sh, so why not use it.

<shameless plug>
My upcoming book contains a short sh-script to generate a feed to keep users informed regarding developments in the data-center, it is called "Unix/Linux Survival Guide".
</shameless plug>

Nope

[Augusto]

You got it wrong, it's blogzwords, not buzzwords. Duh!

Among the many RSS feeds I subscribe to . . .

[mmell]

are SUN and HP's feeds -- along about 70% advertising ("white papers" about coming features such as SUN's ZFS, for example), but I still read them.

An excellent mechanism for getting me to read corporate propoganda as long as there's valid content present to engage and hold my attention.

Unfortunately, I'm here at work where draconian firewall administration combined with an insistence that IE is the only browser makes using RSS feeds a dangerous proposition at best (if an RSS feed triggers our web monitoring application, I could get written up or fired).

Pointcast-WaveTop

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when you could get the Internet via the TV?

You get what you pay for...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and those families paid to see a movie. They paid the posted ticket price and it's double dipping for the theatre to make them pay again with their eyeballs by sitting through an unspecified (and ever increasing) number of ads before the feature.

Maybe they also paid for parking and made dinner reservations. 32 minutes is more that 1/4 the length of most movies and could easily have disrupted their plans for the rest of the evening.

Is that kind of ./ advertising acceptable ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I truely wonder why this obvious PR advertising post didnt trigger direct flaming...

How cool, write a single Ad-formation pseudo prospective "article" illustrating just the targetted business of the author with no hard facts can get you the ./ audience for free !

Intranet RSS Feeds

[AveryT]

I'm a release engineeer (one of several hats I wear) at a small software/managed services company and I have been finding RSS a great mechanism for sharing information internally within the organization. For example, each developer can subscribe to a personalized RSS feed containing his or her open bugs for a particular release. Or the last ten posts to the internal discussion forum. Or whatever. I haven't set up an internal RSS aggregator yet but, since just about everyone uses firefox, they can be easily accessed using firefox live bookmarks.

Thanks to a simple perl DB-to-XML framework and a few lines of XSLT, if I can write a SQL query that returns the columns 'title' and 'link', I get an RSS feed basically for free. Being able to expose database information as an RSS feed so easily really opens up a lot of possibilities.

Re:Let me break it down for ya'll

[EternityInterface]

*
Masturbatory revelation
For the zealot daytraders of claymation
*
Feeding the marginal interesters
Magically potential "it was so usually" detesters
*
Loonix zellout of the always on yellout
"Stop the loonis stop the boonis and there be no shellout on sellouts"
*
The perfect ad on the perfect fad for the perfect dad
"Nothing more than bad advert new dressing clad?
Un ness e sessily how it's had, they make the assholes sad
Put the power in your han, no more hulk smash ad-mad

Re:What's the point?

[millennial]

The point is that RSS is extremely flexible and portable. There are RSS readers for the Palm and Pocket PC platforms. Imagine taking the content of any news/blog site you want and putting it into Slashdot's story summary style. Then imagine being able to pack images, audio clips and other data inside of these files for easy, uniform content delivery. An RSS feed or Podcast could be made to look exactly the same on a mobile phone as it does on your computer, with minimal tweaking.

Re:RSS for advertising (can be done well)

[grahamsz]

Companies can used personalized RSS to their advantage.

I should be able to go to widgetco.com and sign up for information about my widget200.

It can provide general information supporting my widget, let me know of any recalls, inform me that it's about to be out of warranty, let me know that a guiness would go great with my widget.

If it's fine tuned to my tastes then i'd have an RSS for every widget in my house.

Just started using it on my "Corporate" network

[avante]

Wow, just last week I set up RSS to use as internal corporate communication. Only I work for a non-profit, and I did it all with free software. Now, the PhpWiki RecentChanges page shows up in my mail reader, as do recent posts to our PhpBB site. Now I don't have to remember to visit those places anymore, which is good because I can be forgetful.

Re:RSS for advertising (can be done well)

[dmorin]

If it's fine tuned to my tastes then i'd have an RSS for every widget in my house.

Amen to that. I can't remember where I read it, but somewhere I saw the idea of those warranty registration cards you get with every new device you buy behaving like RSS feeds. That way you could get a notice when your warranty expires, or a product recall is in effect, etc... Once again, sure, you can get that stuff with email or snail mail, but you're in better control with an RSS feed because you can opt not to look instead of getting spammed. And, as a benefit for the provider of the info, they only have to push it out onto the feed once and cut back on their costs (at least, for snail mail).

What we need, though, are better aggregators that can manage when to show me what. I don't want 500 individual feeds. Nor do I want to sort by most recent story, or to put them into folders. Quite frankly I don't know what I want well enough that I'd be able to write an algorithm for it. It'll probably have something to do with tagging and then using Bayesian filtering to track which sorts of stories I read most often. But this isn't the place to talk about stuff like that. :)

Is this insightful?

[krjordan]

I mean, there have been feeds for corporate info out there for a long time. Why is it now an 'all of a sudden' situation?

We've been subscribing to corporate feeds for some time.

To Retailers & Corps, RSS == Real Simple Spam

[EraserMouseMan]

You've gotta know sales people are reading this article and thinking to themselves, "I'm not allowd to send spam email anymore but if I can get in on this RSS fad that might help." And corporations will be thinking, "Oh I can send out a RSS to all the employees reminding them to wear their safety goggles when go into the plant!".

Eventually these spam-like uses will annoy the people and they will unsubscribe. I just hope corporations don't require users to require subscription to certain RSS feeds like they require them to check their corporate email account regularly. If this happens RSS will just be another form of corporate communication. No more effective and no less annoying.

Electronic Medical Record

[CyberGarp]

We're looking at using it on an electronic medical record (in mental health). For every client (50000+) that is a patient of a staff (1000+), they get an RSS chart feed. Events are filterable by type and access restrictions. Now there's no more whining, "I didn't know you did that with that patient."

RSS Rocks!

We're using it as a client tool

[blueforce]

We use RSS as a client tool in several ways. We use it to notify clients of our Web-based HRIS system of system updates and enhancements. In addition, we have a messaging sub-system where clients can post messages that are then handled by the appropriate department or employee. When the client's message receives a response it will update the RSS feed rather than us sending an e-mail to tell notify them. E-mail defeats the purpose of the messaging system but RSS is voluntary for the group that refuses to keep checking back for a reply. It really does make a handy replacment for e-mail in some situations.

BLOGOSPHERE?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who stopped reading the poster's submission when he said the word (I hate to even call it a word) "blogosphere"?

Re:What's the point?

[iminplaya]

You'll *definitely* see more ads in feeds as others like Yahoo...(disclosure: my new project Bitty Browser works with feeds)

We're definitely seeing more ads in your posts :-)

RSS doesn't fit all sizes

[sytelus]

Only benefit I see using RSS in these new ideas is that you can ride on its popularity. It's not the shoe that fits all sizes. Here's my article that goes in to details of specific case.