Open The Dialogue

Wake up, publishers, developers, and PR people. RSS doesn't mean a thing to the "users" of the Internet.

This morning, Adam Ostrow published an awesome essay at Mashable! about RSS and its (mis)use, entitled "RSS Needs An Easy Button," and I seriously couldn't agree more. If I stopped doing all the other great work I get to do at this agency and focused on one part of it, it would be the inclusion of, and education on, RSS to the masses.

When I say the masses, I don't mean those of us probably reading this blog, Mashable!, TechCrunch and a host of others. I mean my mom, my sister, Chris Thilk's family, and those of all of our friends and family who use the Internet regularly but don't have a clue what that little orange (or whatever) icon means and how to use it. To this day, it still continues to fail to work like 99% of the rest of the Internet does when you click on it, and only those who have those RSS links take you to a page explaining RSS and offering a host of feeds and ways to use the feeds manage to take a step towards solving this problem.

Sure, a lot of us are using RSS feeds every day, and we know how powerful it can be and how it truly allows you to scale on a huge level. Every single "boot camp" that our DialogueMedia team does with an MWW Group staffer or a client's PR / marketing team that goes through RSS is met with an "OMIGOSH, howcome I wasn't taught about how to use this in college?" when it's people fresh out of school or "WOW, so I can subscribe to ALL of this content, sort it, and manipulate it this way on my mobile, desktop, or on the Web?" And yet, unless you're running a new versioned browser (and trust me developers, the MASSES are not using IE7 and unfortunately not consistently using Safari or Firefox or one of the others that knows what to "do" with RSS once it's clicked on.

Back in late 2005 I slammed the people behind the "redesign" of the RSS icon to the nifty little square most of us are probably seeing in the address bar right now, and how they were missing the point. Well guess what, nothing has TRULY changed. It's two and a half years later, almost, and what HAS changed? Well, anyone with a new browser is at least greeted with a page showing you that there are ways to use it and it doesn't react by throwing a ton of code up on the page. Other than that, it might work sort of like a multimedia link does, opening up a second piece of software if a feedreader is installed on the computer, or if Outlook were auto-configured to snag feeds when people clicked on them. Oooh. And RSS adoption has moved like molasses that's going slightly downhill rather than on a flat countertop.

At the end of the day, I am not sure what the best "solution" is for this problem - which is widespread, frankly - but I think it's up to a lot of "us" to figure it out. Publishers and developers need to consistently have an "explanation" for what it is on their site, or an easy link, and that should come out of the box with blogging and CMS software. Major publishers need to either better explain how people can get their news and information on their terms. Sites like Yahoo! and AOL's portals do a great job of incorporating RSS use into their "My" pages, but not everyone is sure that that's what they're looking at - great start, but there's more work to do.

This last part begs me to ask the question as to whether publishers and others are lax to move on RSS as a subscriber option because they know that right now, the "masses" are still coming to their site, clicking around, surfing through this and that, and that would all but change significantly. Obviously I don't want to be so cynical about it, but could that be a reason, or will that be a reason of concern once the advent of RSS and its true impact reaches a boardroom somewhere?

From a development standpoint, I'm not sure what needs to be done, exactly, but any way to make it a little less "odd" of a thing on the page - and trust me, having it in the address bar is nice, but people STILL don't know what to do with it - would be my best recommendation.

As far as PR people go, why hasn't RSS gotten its due in every single "tech & lifestyle" section of every single daily newspaper in America, and I'm not talking about in the "ask a question" column? Want to get people to start using it and be able to hold their attention better? Let them know it actually exists in the first place. RSS, in THIS form, isn't SUPPOSED to be invisible, at least not yet. Get it to the point where when you say "RSS," "feeds," or something like that a blank stare isn't the response when you're speaking with people are pretty big Internet users but not super technically savvy. RSS can distribute to my TiVo, power your My Yahoo! page, and make widgets work left and right, but until someone has a clue of what to do with the damn link on some crazy large percentage of pages on the ENTIRE Internet, its usage will never be what it should be.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm sure everyone who has devised and executed a social media campaign, particularly one involving outreach to writers of blogs and other sites, has been asked to provide some sort of metric to justify such efforts. Often what's asked for are pageviews or visitors or (gulp) impressions.

But here's the story I tell all the time when people ask about my personal site's reach: I get, on MMM, about 800 hits to the site a day. But a good amount of those come in, via searches, to posts I wrote months, if not years ago. So if you're including MMM in your blog outreach plans and you're basing its inclusion on that 800 +/- daily visits, you need to know that not all those 800 people are coming in through the front door.

That means some portion of that overall number of people are not seeing whatever you've just pitched me - yet - though some of them are. Unlike overall visitor numbers we can tell who's hitting the front page. That is one advantage of the web versus traditional metrics like overall circulation - we can see how people move around on a site.

The 1,000+ people who subscribe to my RSS feed, though, definitely are. That's because via the feed they're always seeing the most recent content and updates, and they're seeing them at a time of their choosing, whatever time they've blocked off to catch up on their reading. But I don't think RSS subscriber numbers is something that's often asked for or included when measuring success. This despite the fact that, based on my experience, far more publishers make their RSS subscriber numbers visible on their sites - largely through a FeedBurner chicklet - than make their site visit stats publicly viewable.

The same rings true here on OTD, where the number of people snagging the RSS feed vastly outstrip the number of hits to the site.

Considering there's such a demand for numbers as a means to justify online public relations efforts; and considering there seem to be more publishers who use that FeedBurner number on their sites; and considering that number translates into a higher percentage of the audience that's going to see the successful results of your outreach, I think it's past time to start factoring RSS numbers into the numbers agencies provide to clients.

Now I'll be the first to state that swapping one number for another does little or nothing to address the fact that influence in a particular vertical niche or community held by one person does not always correlate to certain numbers. But aside from anecdotal impressions given by those familiar with the online space there isn't much we can do to back that up. Numbers are always more reassuring since that's how traditional media has always been measured and that's what people are looking for.

So as long as it's numbers being asked for it's incumbent on those of us navigating the online space on behalf of our clients to provide the best ones available. Considering all the factors above it seems to me RSS subscribers is probably one of the better numbers we can provide.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The full- versus partial-text RSS feed debate has been one that has simmered in the background of the online world for years now, occasionally flaring as people decide to make known that they're unsubscribing to X site because it's a partial feed or whatnot. The passions on this issue usually run high and everyone believes they have the key to understanding why the other side is wrong.

I bring this up because of the recent switch from full to partial feeds on the Freakonomics blog following its partnership with the New York Times. The blog is now hosted on the NYTimes site and many readers have apparently voiced their criticism of the switch rather loudly. The authors have tried to explain what happened a couple times but now author Stephen J. Dubner has written what may be the best rationalization of partial feed publishing to date.

Dubner explains that advertising is sold on the NYTimes site based on page views. So putting out full-content feeds would cut into page views, thereby decreasing the paper's ad revenue, thereby decreasing the pot of money that the Freakonomics crew gets a small cut of. He states this is not selling out - that the content is still free - you just need to come to the NYTimes site to read it. Yes, the paper could sell ads in the full feed but they chose not to based on their own comfort level as well as that of their advertisers. In the end Dubner says the resources they now have access to at the NYT are valuable enough to them that they feel the partial feed decision is worth it.

It is, as Dubner says, up to the reader to decide whether they're willing to pay the cost, the exposure to advertising, to read their content. If not that's up to them. Whatever each individual's decision might be I think Dubner and the team there is to be commended for providing such a logical and compelling explanation of their thinking to their readers.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the weekend, Dave Winer posted a link to Sue Polinsky's item at Download Squad about RSS, where she asked "Why do you care about RSS?" in her title. She mentions some things that I see every day, about how you really don't have an event without something about RSS being mentioned, and has the same attitude that Chris and I do about it - once you really start using it, you kind of don't know how you used it beforehand.

A few days ago, I showed someone how I read my feeds on my laptop, to scan headlines and find news for posting in our fun and exciting Links Of The Day posts, on my other blogs, or to just keep an eye on what's going on any and everywhere. It's a rough task made simple, and while it's hard managing hundreds and hundreds of feeds, RSS helps you realize that you don't have to read *everything* nor do you have to go to those hundreds of Websites individually, like you used to, it's easy to grasp how powerful of a tool RSS is - and that's just the simplistic way of looking at it as the solution for news and information distribution to readers. So, I'd ask that you post why you love RSS, either here or over at Polinsky's Download Squad post.

Posted by Tom Biro at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's an interesting idea from David Singer, the guy who runs the VodkaFish blog. With AOL shutting down a number of the Weblogs, Inc. blogs (including AdJab, which Tom and I wrote for regularly) it would be fascinating to see the downward curve as people unsubscribe from the RSS feeds for those blogs. Not everyone, as he says, is going to automatically go and delete their subscription, it might take months before people get around to it. After all, there's no additional cost to subscribing to a feed so it doesn't really matter. I'd love to see this kind of report since I think it, as much as anything, would show how regularly maintain their feeds.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While paying my American Express Card bill a few moments ago, I noticed that they are now offering Cardmember offers and other information via RSS on their Website.

While I might have a bit of past history with the company (I worked at American Express from 1999 until 2002), it doesn't mean I can't say that I think this is a pretty slick use of RSS, if not very simple and basic. If anything, it proves the point that you don't have to do something super powerful and "out there" with a technology such as RSS, you just have to use it as an option, another way to reach out to your existing customers. It's not just about the offers on your statement that are tailored to you, but creating the opportunity to get offers on their terms, when (and most importantly, if) they want them. Plus, in that American Express has a pretty good handle on "exclusive" offers such as show tickets, etc., this could be a really good thing for them. I'd be curious to see what kind of use rate their was.

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I can't tell you how many times I remarked to Tom along the lines of "I just have to finish some reading..." when he asks me to do something. That's why I, for the first time since its launch, laughed at this Blaugh comic.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Not sure whether this is another "test" that accidentally got pushed live or not (I have a call in to a spokesperson) but I'm once again seeing Google AdSense ads appearing next to feeds within Newsgator Online.

Notice also that there's now a small "+" sign next to each post. Everything is now coming through as a partial feed and you have to click that "+" to see the full text. Even if the full text is already displayed (if, say, someone has just written a one or two line post) any links are being stripped out of the post. You have to hit that "+" to see the links appear.

Again, I've got a call into the spokesperson I'd previously talked to about Newsgator adding advertising and will check back in here with any updates I have.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well the promised interview didn't materialize, but Newsgator founder Greg Reinacker has put up a post on his blog that deals with the addition of AdSense ads to Newsgator Online that works to confirm what we had previously been hearing and speculating. In short, AdSense ads in some shape or form are coming to NGO as part of what sounds like a period of change and evolution for the service. There's no definitive timeline or format for how these will begin appearing but they are coming. What happened last Friday was the inadvertant flipping of a switch.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Right now it's unclear what's going on with AdSense ads being placed next to blog posts within free RSS reader Newsgator Online. Jason Calacanis says that he's hearing the fleeting appearance of such ads on Friday was a mistake and that there's nothing like this coming down the pike. But I'm hearing that this is happening officially soon. As I said before I'm going to speak to someone at Newsgator tomorrow and will have more to say after that.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So here's something interesting. I pulled up Newsgator Online and opened a new folder to catch up on my afternoon reading and was greeted by a tower of AdSense ads right next to the first three posts in each folder. The tower of ads makes each item bigger, meaning the items are stretched out a bit. This is a huge deal if this is a new tactic by Newsgator to monetize their free online RSS reader. I've contacted the company to see what the story is on this in terms of a rollout system wide.

[UPDATE] According to a spokesperson for Newsgator, this was a test that was released at about 1PM Colorado time. But it's being taken down until early next week because of the way it was affecting the formatting. More to come on this early next week when I have a chance to speak to someone at Newsgator.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Tuesday, Chris was writing about how Paramount could have done a better job with a site relaunch by including RSS and other technologies, just because it would have been a good business decision. In a way, that's a way for Paramount to keep people "coming back" even if it's just to the brand's feed(s) in an RSS reader.

This morning, David Singer pinged me about how ESPN is now in the RSS game, even more than just having various feeds on their site, with the launch of their myESPN (beta, of course). Just like your My Yahoo! allows for news, sports, weather, and other information to be customized, you can create a sports-focused landing page, with a lot of information from ESPN itself. And just like elsewhere, you can also drop your own feeds in, which we learn more about here at the FatMixx blog, written by Sujal, who is the manager of sports engineering at ESPN.com. I'm sure, as Kareem Mayan does, we'll have concerns about how they're doing things, but it's a step in the right direction, especially when most are taking no steps at all. In a way, I can see this being the first big step in Disney/ABC/ESPN putting together its own portal landing page that is fully RSSified and customizable.

More on this later. In the meantime, you can check out what other bloggers are saying through this search at Technorati.

[update] Over on his personal blog, David Singer has posted some really good feedback to the site. And, in really good blog fashion, developer Sujal has already posted a comment thanking him for the feedback. I, too, got a kick out of a visit I got from someone who was using myespn.go.com to read feeds. Kinda cool, in a way-too-meta sorta way.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Yesterday my good friend Kirk Skodis at Film Plug pointed to the newly redesigned website for Paramount Pictures. I really like quite a bit of the new site, even beyond just the sleeker design and better overall layout it has. From a branding standpoint, it works very well, too. The main page has links to the different divisions of the studio, including Paramount Vantage (the art-house division) and Dreamworks, which Paramount recently purchased control over. It also highlights what I'd call its equity partners such as Marvel Comics, who will develop films based on their comic characters for eventual distribution through Paramount.

But in applying new media tools the site falls short. There's at least one section that could have been completely re-imagined and, most importantly, given an RSS feed. That's the “Newswire” section. That Newswire is just screaming for an RSS feed as well as to be used more regularly. This should be utilized for not only the occasional corporate announcement of how well a certain movie did at the box office. It should be updated every time the official website for a Paramount movie gets launched or upgraded, every time there's a new trailer available, every time a poster gets released and any time there's any other sort of announcement regarding the marketing a movie being created by the studio. And don't get me started on how it could be used for production updates. That's a whole other discussion.

More and more companies are discovering that blogs or, at the very least, RSS-enabled news pages, are a valuable asset. They allow the company, through either a junior-level staffer or the CEO, to speak directly to the consumer. Specifically, it allows them to speak to a sub-set of that consumer base that's especially interested in that company or industry. A sub-set of that audience is also blogging about their interests and passions. That turns the company into a wire service in and of itself, distributing news on a regular basis to a citizen press corps which is happy to get such updates and, when they're interesting enough, pass them on to their readers. Just like the traditional relationship between the PR industry and the mainstream press, only replicated X number of times.

By not setting such systems of news distribution up, companies are sending the following two messages out to the public: 1) We'll decide who we speak directly to, thank you very much and 2) If you're not in that group we're going to force you to come to our page and spend an hour poking around to see if there's anything new, which there might not even be.

Here's something I said a while ago to a group of people: If a corporate site doesn't have RSS, it just don't exist to me. I have chosen which sites to subscribe to and keeping up with them takes up most of the time I have set aside for reading and information gathering. I don't have time to go and poke around a non RSS-enabled site for what's new. I need those updates delivered to me. By not doing so the company only increases my reliance – and brand allegiance – to those sites it has deemed worthy of communicating directly with. That's because those sites do have RSS feeds, and that's where I get my news.

And don't try to say “Well not everyone is hooked into RSS and that's why we don't use it.” Go to FeedBurner or FeedBlitz. They allow you to create a feed that also can be turned into an email newsletter. So that excuse just doesn't hold water. Just because not everyone uses it doesn't mean that 1) they won't one day or 2) that you're not turning off audiences that do.

If a company really wants to communicate with its audiences, both passive and active, it would be wise to figure out how to do so in a manner that's useful to the whole audience. Even more than that, look at the tools that also have the advantage of empowering the active part of that audience, the group that's blogging, to help spread the word about the company. It's well past time to move beyond “push” corporate communications and let people “pull” what they want and when they want it.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Steve Rubel thinks one part of the future of online advertising lies with RSS aggregators. What he foresees is a future where RSS usage is much higher than it is today, with everyone subscribed to feeds whether they know it or not. The problem with the current RSS aggregator business model is that it hasn't been fully monetized, with most companys like Bloglines and Newsgator giving away their online readers for free. What they have, though, is a tremendous amount of data on popular feeds, click-through rates and other information including demographic data. So what if, Steve wonders, they leveraged that data to advertisers and began offering users sponsored feeds or other ways to insert ads into the daily reading people are doing?

I think he's onto something here. Feeds are targeted information streams that people opt-in to receive, meaning they're very engaged and paying attention to what's coming through them. These are traits advertisers generally like to see in an audience and that they'd problably be willing to pay a premium price for access to.

Posted by Chris Thilk at 12:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, when going through my RSS feeds in FeedDemon, I noticed something that I'm sure I'd seen before but for some reason it struck me a little differently than normal - that some feeds at newspapers had different author information than other publications. Sure, everyone publishes their feeds differently, and everyone uses different content management systems. But it got me thinking, not so much that we need to call for consistency across the board, but that it seemed like no one was really sure what to put in individual entries / articles as far as author information, etc.

For example - the Seattle Times puts the email addresses of the author of each article, but only does so when the article is written by a Times staffer.

On the other hand, newspapers such as the Boston Globe go one step further, publishing the name of the author of the article, whether or not they work for the Associated Press or the Globe.

The New York Times publishes the name of the article author (in caps - just sayin'), and many of the newspapers in my feed reader don't publish any author information at all. Aside from that, many publications aren't adding any extra tidbits to their feeds - not that I can blame them just yet, as the mainstream isn't into all the del.icio.us linking and such - but I can see that coming. But I'd love to pose the question - is seeing author information, email addresses, or having other "features" available within RSS feeds from publications you read regularly helpful, and is there anything in particular you'd like to see across the board?

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most of the chatter about RSS is how it allows news, blog, and other typically-serious information to your desktop, online reader, or wherever you happen to get it. There hasn't been much talk about the finer uses for the technology, such as managing your fantasy [insert sport here] team(s). Who needs those pesky email updates with what your players are doing, and who really wants to have to log into the system(s) every day and see what people are doing or go read every box score to find out what your players did? Now, you don't have to.

David Singer found that not only was Sportsline offering a batch of feeds with regards to players, teams, and other sports-related news, but that you could actually subscribe to your fantasy team's own RSS feed through a nifty little mouseover he happened to be doing while managing his team a few days ago.

Now, I don't want to hear any more nasty comments about what RSS is good for for the next few weeks.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just started running FeedDemon 2.0 on my work machine this morning, and so far, so good. Been having a good time with the pre-releases and betas, so I had a pretty good feel for now the newer features would roll, and this just firms it all up. Congrats to Nick and the whole FeedDemon / NewsGator crew on this version, and looking forward to more great work from y'all.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Just saw that Business Wire has added the one-click "Add to My Yahoo!" button to its RSS feeds page (you've got to be logged in to see it). While they haven't added the "MyAOL," "MSN," "Bloglines, "Rojo," or any other services just yet, it's a decent start, and the next move in the wire service attempting to meet the marketplace tango.

Now if only they'd realize that the passwords shouldn't be necessary for getting people to subscribe. PR Newswire tried to "shut out" people for a long time who didn't meet the "journalist" credentials that they had set forth, and BW made a point to let bloggers in. But BW hasn't been able to let go of this one for some odd reason.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:40 PM | Permalink

On Monday, the Bloglines team announced that a few days earlier, the service served up its billionth (yes, that's with a "b") article to users. Additionally, check out the chart showing how a datacenter move has made its service even better.

Congrats, Bloglines!

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As usual, I'm hesitant to tag too many things as "Web 2.0," but here I'm going to do so. Last night, I received an invite from a friend for Newsvine, a new news service that's currently in private beta. The Web 2.0-ishness of it is that you can literally have your own "column," (mine is tombiro.newsvine.com) where you can write about anything that you consider newsworthy - and so can anyone else. When combined with a slew of other features (detailed below and in the forthcoming links), I'd have to say that this is one of the cooler things I've seen of late. The man behind the project (assuredly with others) is Mike Davidson, formerly of ESPN.com.

Back in November, Davidson announced Newsvine, calling it "Just like your favorite news site, only smarter." It's got a combination of Associated Press and independently published stories - and within any story, you can "vote" for it to make it more popular, like Digg, and you can comment on any story, like most blogs. Additionally, you can "report" links to the appropriate authority for delisting, if necessary. One thing that I *really* think is awesome is the bookmarklet-like "Seed Newsline" feature, which allows you to just click once and submit something to Newsvine for others to see - a great timesaver, and super helpful for those of us who are either a) regularly publishing elsewhere and don't always have time to publish more content here, but want to contribute or b) are better at filtering and can point people to a ton of great stuff.

Obviously I can't explain it all, and you really have to see it to believe it. However, Anthony Casey has a great runthrough over at his blog, Escape Crate. I advise you to check it out and see what you think.

Lots more here at Technorati.

Posted by Tom Biro at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this week, Steve Rubel posted a call-to-action for folks to "mobilfy" their blogs. Definitely a smart move, and considering its ease, it's a wonder more folks haven't done it. I chose to go with WINKsite for the MWW blogs, and you can see the logo on the lower portion of my sidebar. The mobile version of OTD can be found at http://winksite.com/otd/otd, and our CEO Michael Kempner's blog, MWW Straight Talk, can be found at http://winksite.com/otd/straighttalk.

If you're concerned about how difficult this is to do - don't be - it's literally as easy as setting up a free account at WINKsite and pointing it to your blog's RSS feed.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

ClickZ's Pamela Parker reports Thursday that Lexus is going all new media on us with its latest campaign, LexusFusion.com, which is using podcasts and video to market the new IS model. This marketing effort is specifically aimed at the African-American community, and features music selections in the hip-hop / jazz fusion genre. In addition to the above-mentioned elements, Lexus is also advertising widely on blogs.

[via Marketing VOX]

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In case you hadn't heard, Bloglines has scheduled an outage today with various stages of usage between 2pm and 8pm Pacific time. Details are over at their site - and keep in mind that this is for a new data center to take over the servers, which is great to hear.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, I was discussing this post by Robert Scoble on IM with Chris Thilk of Bacon's about how Microsoft and Mozilla folk have gotten together to agree on what an RSS icon would look like across both of the brands' browsers. That's all well and good, but isn't the problem still getting people to click on the button and figure out what it means? Don't tell me there aren't buttons in your browser that you have seen but might never use, especially if you've loaded some toolbars and other software that modifies your browser. I'm still seeing statements like the following from the Microsoft Team RSS Blog:

There are five parts of the experience for feeds in IE7: discovering if a webpage has a feed, previewing the feed, subscribing to the feed to get continual notifications of new items, managing the list of the subscribed feeds, and reading the feed contents. The icon in this post is for the first two parts which shipped in Beta 1. The icon is visible in the IE7 frame to indicate the presence of a feed for the current webpage. Clicking on the feed icon takes the user to readable preview of the feed from which the user can subscribe to it.

This still doesn't address the fact that on every Web page that has an RSS icon, unless it's directed to a particular service (My Yahoo!, etc.), clicking gets you a page that many people I've showed it to describe as "gobbledegook." That's the big issue here. This is like putting a cute little bandage with a kid's favorite cartoon character on a child's leg - but putting it next to the cut. Sure it's cute, the kid likes what it looks like, and the bandage does "work" in covering that portion of skin, but the cut is still there.

I'm not as concerned about browsers using the same button or not, because RARELY are you going to have people who are flipping from Firefox to IE or back and forth unless they're a) developers testing things out, b) not allowed to have another browser on a work/school computer, or c) I'm sure something else could explain this. Additionally, this is also looking at it from the perspective that people would subscribe to RSS feeds *within* their browsing software. What about the My Yahoo! user, the My AOL user, or someone else? There are thousands - perhaps millions - of people who have subscribed to RSS-fed content through those platforms alone who have exactly zero clue that they are utilizing RSS or even what the heck RSS is.

Moreover, bloggers and other online publishers are already using other icons on their pages, ranging from the orange "XML" or "RSS" buttons, to the various buttons FeedBurner offers, to "Syndicate this" to "Subscribe here." I could go on all day. I'm one to think that while it seems like a bigtime pain to get the publishers involved, they're the ones holding the cards (the site visitors) right now, and some sort of simple "What is this?" that could be put next to the feed button/icon that led to some centralized page (Like this one from Six Apart, or Wikipedia, perhaps?) that gave the lowdown on what the feed was, and how a user should utilize it is something I'd love to see. This is a lot less about marketing (read: nifty icons) and more about getting people to grasp what RSS/Atom/other forms of content delivery are all about in the first place.

It's great that two browser powers are getting together on this, and surely they want eyeballs to be within their software while working with blogs, news sources, and RSS feeds, but there are plenty of other places where people might want to subscribe through. Send them to Bloglines, NewsGator, whatever. Just get people educated on the syndication train, and go from there. People are already doing what these folks are talking about - see photo below.

This is an example of one of the feeds I follow through FeedDemon. When I go to any page with a feed, the software pops up an icon in the lower right corner showing me that there is an RSS feed on that page that I might want to subscribe to. This is very helpful for when you're following a thread through blogs or other sources, and you decide you want to subscribe to a site for later viewing. Two important things here, though. I know what I'm doing with feeds, and am using a feed reading tool to do so. The second is that it's not perfect. Sometimes (like in this case) there are multiple feeds on a page, and it doesn't get them all. Let's pretend I'm a "new" feed user or interested party, I still have no idea what I'm doing. What if I happen to stumble upon the PR Newswire site, and click on "RSS" at the top. It takes me to a page with a slew of feeds. Sure, they "describe" RSS on the right, but it still takes a "right click" and a paste into my RSS reader. Oops - what if I'm a Mac user? Sorry, can't right click. What if I don't know what an RSS reader is? Well, I've got to go look that up.

Again, I don't mean to trash the idea here of having some similarity across browsers, but this is a software solution, not a Web solution. Nothing has been solved here, and until people are taught what RSS is and that it's as simple as clicking on any other hyperlink, we'll continue to have this issue.

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Scoble asked "Are you an RSS addict?" in a post a week ago - and after making a merge/purge this morning through my feeds in FeedDemon, I've got to say it's only getting worse. 653 feeds. Last week I was quoted as having 562, but I guess I hadn't kept quite that good track of the new ones I'd added - which include a few PubSub feeds, del.icio.us searches, Google News searches, and some other "combination" feeds on top of a number of newspaper sections and a few hundred blogs.

So what about you?

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the weekend, Scoble was discussing return on investment for the number of people reading RSS as opposed to another medium. No need to rehash most of it, really, but I wanted to echo one sentiment. He mentioned a number of readers on his blog, or of his RSS feed, and how they matter in the long term. I have the same thoughts he does - it doesn't matter if you have 500 reader or 50,000 - obviously 50,000 is "more" readership, but if those 500 persons are just the right 500 decision makers, influencers, or people of importance within the industry or space that you're interested in reaching into, then nothing else matters.

Yesterday, I spoke with a number of newsroom staffers at a major newspaper here in New Jersey, and made a similar statement, and compared it to their newspaper - that the people who are reading most blogs, especially after one has "matured" and been in the market for some time, are the persons who need to be reading it. It's like splitting up the sections of the newspaper - some people read the sports and front page, some people like the obits and classifieds, others might read the whole thing. Think of a blog, especially a niche or topical one, as one of those smaller divisions within the publication.

For the public relations industry, this is great in comparing what we can do in comparison to advertising - as an advertiser, you take a chance that your ad might not make it in front of your target audience, especially if you buy a ROP (run of paper) advertisement. On the other hand, one would hope that the public relations firm working with a client would be dealing with the right reporter who has his or her stories placed in the section of the paper that is most likely to be read by those same interested parties. This works the same way for blogs - if we're all out here sending press releases to 500 blogs that "might" want to hear what a client has to say, then we're wasting our time. Why not spend some more time finding the blogs and influencers that are relevant to those spaces, develop relationships, and work with those writers to find out what they want to hear, and how we can help them get their jobs - as bloggers - done. And yes, that means getting *our* jobs as public relations professionals done, too, but it's important to realize that you're not just placing the seed, you're helping the "economy" of media grow. Plus, if you reach out to just the right blogger, then others will probably link their way, further expanding the reach of your original story.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the first questions that I'm asked by someone I'm giving a short and sweet intro or lesson on blogs is: Where do I find them? To me, it's kind of a funny question, but that's just because I'm "in" the community and see them as being everywhere - probably in the same way that people in advertising notice the eyes on characters on cereal boxes looking downwards when walking down that aisle of the grocery store - so it's not a silly question at all. Sure, there are a ton of them, but how would you explain the easiest way to find blogs to someone? Would you show them Technorati? Would you send them to Blogger.com? There are probably a million answers, and I have a few tips I usually pass along on my own. Howabout you, what do you folks do to recommend a starting point for people interested in blogs?

Similarly, many of us who read a lot of blogs know how to use a lot of the tools, but sometimes get stuck reading within the same space of the blogs we read and the blogs that our favorite bloggers read. How to get through all the clutter? Those of us with a ton of RSS feeds will tell you that just covering those on a daily basis is a task in itself, so even though there's a need to find more, it's not always so simple. So when a neat feature appears within something we're already using (i.e. Bloglines, My Yahoo!, or an RSS reader), it makes it that much better and time-saving. That's why I'm psyched about the new feature that Nick Bradbury is saying will be included in the next version of FeedDemon - the ability to find RSS feeds for certain topics. Obviously it's a super simple way for those "new to RSS" as Nick calls them, but should also serve a solid purpose for those of us who might be a bit time constrained given all the things we're already reading.

Posted by Tom Biro at 02:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The fine folks at Bloglines have added a new feature to the great free service they offer - a "scaled down" mobile version, so you can now check all the blogs and news sources you wish to keep up with, while on the move, all without a full size Web browser. Sure, most people who have mobile devices have decent sized screens and the right software to surf the Web at will, but now, it's even easier to do sowhile continuing to use your existing Bloglines subscriptions.

Yet again, it's about choices for your customers.

Posted by Tom Biro at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just heard that Bacon's Information, the media intelligence firm, has added RSS support for its own business. Right now it's Bacon's-specific feeds - one for company press releases, and another for "In the Media" items where the firm is mentioned.

This is great to see another organization adopting RSS as another distribution method for its information. Even if it's as simple as company announcements, it's yet another hand being raised in Information Revolution 101.

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nick Bradbury notes one of the newest features in the latest version of FeedDemon [v 1.6 RC1], Reports. Right now, you can keep track of which feeds you visit the most, least, and even those that haven't published much at all - "Dinosaurs," as they're called. I'm a big FeedDemon user, and have upgraded to this version on one of the machines I use every day so far. At this point, no issues, and I've been following along as the Beta releases have been coming out. The whole acquisition by NewsGator has been nothing but helpful for me, as I never feel like I'm duplicating efforts or having to sort through feeds or posts I've already read - the one advantage that the Web-only-based services like Bloglines could previously hold over the head of the client-side software packages.

Posted by Tom Biro at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, Robert Scoble responded to Dave Winer's reaction to a request from Microsoft's developers to get input on what a new and improved RSS icon should look like and carry on it. He states that Microsoft "love[s] icons," but that's not a good enough excuse. Just because he's right about having "RSS" or "XML" on a button not being the best idea - universally - doesn't mean that it's something that should be voted on for Microsoft's implementation and other people to perhaps adopt, most likely further fraying any semblance of universal usage of yet another standard.

Sure, posting it on the MSDN blog is a great way to open it up for the public's input, but what about putting this "out there" for all to chime in on? Surely there's enough non-techspeaking non-English only people that would join in the fray and share some ideas.

Posted by Tom Biro at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There was lots of big news in the world of RSS this week, including a report from Yahoo! about usage and trends and the soft launch of Google's web-based Reader tool. The similar vein in all of these stories and events is that the aggregators involved are all fairly easy to use, and are in some cases "invisible" to the end user. Take the My Yahoo! service, for instance. Users have been getting all of their news, sports, and stock quotes there for some time now, and are now able to put blogs and other sources in there - perhaps unbeknownst to them that RSS - Really Simple Syndication - is even behind the action.

That's not to say that "production level" users of RSS aren't also utilizing services like this, but it does raise the question as to whether the software-based readers will have any sort of long term viability. But as platform-based services like NewsGator appear to be proving, it's possible to have your cake (client side software such as NetNewsWire or FeedDemon) and eat it, too (through NewsGator Online).

Up next for toying around with is FeedLounge, which has a pretty awesome looking interface, based on the screenshots. Now, to get invited to the beta...

Posted by Tom Biro at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night, Om Malik scored a big one when he informed about NewsGator's intent to purchase RSS feed newsreader NetNewsWire, which runs on the Mac OS. This comes less than six months after the firm purchased Nick Bradbury's FeedDemon (which I use at both home and work) - and it's probably not the last move of this type. This afternoon, I read over at Scoble's that yes indeed, NewsGator has purchased Ranchero Software, the makers of NetNewsWire.

Why all the fuss? Well, NewsGator has taken the "tough noogies" out of acquisitions by opening up its existing platform to users of various software - in this case NetNewsWire and FeedDemon - adding a new level of functionality (synchronization at multiple locations, online access when software isn't available) while keeping you, the user, comfortable. So while it is a subscription service, current users of those packages have been given two years of access to NewsGator's offerings - and don't have to "change" the way they were using their RSS reader prior to this event. Additionally, this creates an excellent - and true - cross-platform integration (through NewsGator Online) of a service that's important to many blog authors, readers, and other users of RSS.

Posted by Tom Biro at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over at Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel cites a few examples of audio becoming more and more prevalent on the Web as a welcome change. Time seems to be the deciding factor in what should or should not be transferred from audio to text or vice versa. One of the main reasons blogging grabbed so many eyeballs was the speed in which it could be created as well as digested. On the other hand, you can't always read things all day long, so audio comes in handy while driving in your car or taking mass transit. People will have their preferences, but we have to keep one thing in mind - choice. Offering both audio and textual delivery of your content is great if it makes sense, but don't create podcasts of your blog entries just because you can.

Posted by Tom Biro at 06:52 PM | Permalink