Steve Gillmor: Bodcasting. Splash! Fwoop! Znorf. It’s the sound of nextgen RSS plays parachuting into the Valley, Rte. 128, and everywhere there’s a broadband connection. Odeo, Brightcove, ourmedia, the Times–by this time next spring the forest will be thick with bees circling in search of unpolinated flowers. The RSS Bubble is here.
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May 2005
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March 02, 2005
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Highlights
- The Gathering Storms Over Speech
How an arrogant Apple Computer, cynical election law enforcers and well-meaning legislators are threatening tomorrow's journalists. - Where Newspapers Can Start the Conversation
On the Editorial Page, of course... - Newspapers: Open Your Archives
Maybe there's more money in "free" search than paid archives. There's certainly more community value. - The End of Objectivity
If objectivity is unattainable, let's replace it with something better.
Recent Posts
- Reminder: New Site and Blog
- Moving Day...
- Journalistic Ethics, Codes of
- Good Morning Silicon Valley Blog
- Business Model: Cause Customers Trouble, Make Them Pay to Fix
- Drug War Still Failing
- Comment Spammers On Attack
- Google's Toolbar Keeps Invasive Autolink
- Celebrating Political Sleaze
- Hyperlocal and Google
Grassroots Thinking
Talks & Travels
- 05/07/05, Nashville
BlogNashville - 05/16/05, New York City
Personal Democracy Forum - 05/25/05, Carlsbad, CA
D: All Things Digital
We'll see how the RSS bubble turns out. This is something that I've been considering for a while and it doesn't seem like fertile ground for heavy advertising.
Why? Because RSS feeds aren't a pure 'push' technology. Users have to sign-up for them and have to update their feeds to get new content. Those feeds that are overwhelmed with advertising lose value as news sources and will be dropped by users.
RSS is free, so you can't compete on price. You have to compete on features. If ads are seen by users as being a negative-feature those feeds that avoid ads will achieve a defendable competitive advantage.
I would expect brand cross pollination advertising, ala Gawker's ads for other sites in their network, to be an acceptable form of advertising to embed in RSS. But the first time I update my BoingBoing feed and see animated advertisements for Monster.com I'll switch back to just visiting the site or drop it from my daily reads completely.
The real place to put the ads is in the RSS reader software. I've been using SharpReader for a couple months and have been very satisfied so I haven't checked out other RSS readers. Do they have advertisements embedded in the frames yet?
Posted by: ashusta | March 03, 2005 at 09:07 AM
Dan, this article might be a marker in time.
Posted by: Randy Charles Morin | March 10, 2005 at 07:31 AM