BuzzMachine

Cookies in RSS

: I talked about this with Fred Wilson yesterday and Dave Morgan today — and Fred beat me to blogging it:

We need to get RSS readers to take cookies if we are ever going to make RSS work as a successful medium.

Oh, I know that consumers will want to read RSS; I’m convinced. But unless publishers can make money off content transported that way, they will handicap feeds, giving readers only headlines and excerpts and working too hard to make them come to their sites when they should look at RSS as just another way to feed content to consumers.

Dave, head of Tacoda and one of the smartest people I know in this biz, agrees that setting cookies is essential for advertisers and thus for publisher revenue but he’s not worried because he thinks that browsers will take on RSS functionality. I think he’s right. But Dave also said it’s going to take Microsoft time to add RSS into its next versions of IE and Outlook. In the meantime, there is an opportunity for others to blaze the trail.

So let’s take this one step further…

It’s time for some creative thinking about the creative potential of RSS and content and advertising. Look at what ESPN has done using RSS as a transport mechanism for video and video advertising (when you come to the ESPN home page, you’ll find video already downloaded and ready to serve because it was sent you in the background as an RSS feed… and you won’t even know you’re using RSS).

RSS has the potential to serve better content and advertising. Reuters started using it to send a feed of video links. Hell, it could send the video clips, too (if Reuters weren’t worried about just streaming). Content and ads with video and other rich media could be downloaded to your machine in the background and served up immediately. And if this comes in feeds to which you subscribe and if it doesn’t slow down your machine and if the content is compelling then you won’t object — and the content and advertising will be more targeted as well.

Adam Curry has been playing around with RSS and audio. Ernie Miller is shouting the wonders of RSS + BitTorrent from every mountaintop.

OK, now it’s time for content producers — TV, online, print — and marketers — from big creative agencies — to wake up and smell the potential of RSS. It’s another way to deliver content; in many ways, it’s a better way. So what all can it do? Now is the time to try.

: See also Staci Kramer’s OJR story on RSS.

: UPDATE: Scott in the comments says advertising will break RSS as it broke email. My reply:

Scott:

I disagree. Advertising will support RSS, as it supports Web content. Advertising did indeed break email because you have no control over what is sent to you. In RSS, you do. Of course, a publisher could mess up the RSS feed with intrusive advertising but if it gets too bad people will unsubscribe to that publisher’s feed. On the other hand, if the publisher can’t make money from the RSS feed — and if that feed cannibalizes its Web business — then they won’t put up RSS and THAT is what will break RSS. So I’d put it the other way: No having advertising is what will break RSS.

: UPDATE: Seyad in the comments quite properly corrects my slopping wording above: Of course, RSS supports cookies in that it can send out cookies just as HTML does. What I’m really asking for, of course, is that RSS aggregators and readers support cookies consistently. Thanks for the correction, Seyad. (I am, I’ll remind everyone, the poster boy for the A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing Foundation.)

Busted

: Henry Copeland busts the Boston Globe’s Hiawatha Bray…

…who wrote in a March 2002 article for the Boston Globe that “blogging is an ephemeral fad, destined to burn itself out in a year or two.” The original article has disappeared into the Globe’s archives, but its trace is here. Isn’t it time to revisit that prediction Hiawatha?

A reporter with balls would eat crow publicly.

: UPDATE: Henry adds in the comments:

Turns out I need to eat a little crow too. As Corvidophile Ken Layne noted in my blog’s comments, Bray actually wrote on June 1 in the Globe: “Over the past two years, blogging has gone from an eccentric hobby to a powerful new form of journalism.” Quite an about face. Sadly, no recognition by Bray or the Globe of the prior failed prediction, but at least Bray has now climbed aboard the bandwagon. Bad news for blogging?

A friend is worth…. not much

: Kept thinking about Friendster’s hiring of Scott Sassa as its new head and for me it comes down to this: Sassa didn’t have a job and Friendster doesn’t have a business.

Huff and puff and blow that bubble up

: I want to nod my head and agree with everything in this quote until I remind myself that it comes from Mark Andreesen, with whom I would not invest my passbook account. But I did like the quote anyway:

The economics of the Internet have undergone something like a thousand-times swing. If you’re going to launch an Internet site or an Internet business today, it’s probably going to cost about a tenth of what it would have cost five years ago, but you’re going to have 10 times more consumers you can address and probably 10 times the advertising revenue. There’s a seriousness and commitment and dedication and effort and investment going into it now that is a lot more interesting and a lot more real than what was happening in the ’90s.

Somebody have a pin?

Rococo.com

: I’ll bet no blog conference has ever been held in such a luxurious setting.

One good link deserves another

: Jason Calacanis was upset with me. What, no link love for his new auto blog? I complained that he hadn’t given any link love to Spirit of America. Well, he jumped up and linked generously. So now here’s another link to Jason’s auto blog. Looks good. Rides smooth.

Howdy, neighbor

: The wonderful and talented Debra Galant has started a new hyperlocal blog — Barista and Bloomfield Avenue — and it’s damned good. Here’s another explan.

It takes time for hyperlocal to grow because (a) the blogs come from the passion and effort of neighbors so motivated and (b) the traffic has to grow organically, like a fine coffee bean. But grow, it will.

Congrats, Debra.

And I’ll take a large decaf, no room for milk. And a blueberry scone, please.

.IQ

: Iraq wants the .IQ domain. Great idea on so many levels: Iraq can and should build a robust and free presence on the Internet (shaming many a neighbor). And, hell, Iraq can sell use of .IQ to outsiders for a profitable price. Someday, domains could be more valuable than oil, eh?