Back to Main

Syndication/RSS

April 11, 2008

ClickZ Blog Twitter Feed

If you're a Twitter user and read this blog, why not follow our Twitter feed?

More ClickZ content on Twitter soon.

Tweet!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 25, 2008

Going Off Your Feed

Changing the way your RSS feeds work isn't something to be undertaken lightly -- particularly if you've got popular feeds with thousands and thousands of subscribers.

Case in point: For several years, I've subscribed to the feed of a popular site that tracks Macintosh software updates. It pushes perhaps 30-50 updates my way per day. According to Bloglines' subscription counter, thousands aof other MacFaithful followed this feed too.

Presumably, those other subscribers get the feed for the same reason I do. We're busy. We're lazy. It's far, far easier to passively receive the feed than to have to visit the actual site on a daily -- even a weekly -- basis. This learned passivity (for the sake of convenience) also has its consequences. It took me over seven weeks to realized I hadn't been getting my usual multiple times daily updates from the site.

They changed the way their feeds work. And they didn't tell me.

Or perhaps they did. Maybe an announcement was posted on the site. Or in their weekly newsletter. What they didn't do was feed that critical piece of news on the channel so many of us have come to rely on: the RSS feed itself.

Eventually, I missed getting the feed. But I track over 200 feeds on a daily basis. It takes a while to notice one that's gone missing.

Publishers - take heed. Don't let your readers go off their feed.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 14, 2008

RSS - You Like It. You Really Like It.

Together with my colleague Anna Maria, I recently judged dozens of entries in an online B2B publishing competition. This was hardcore niche stuff, like magazines for people who trade thoroughbred racehorses and other arcane (to us) subject matter.

What struck me was that every one of these Web sites and e-newsletters offered readers the option of subscribing to RSS feeds. All of them -- and precious few were aimed at sophisticated Web users. In many cases, the "newsletter" was, in fact, a PDF download (hello, 1997).

Today I was mucking around in our own stats and decided to take a look at subscriptions to ClickZ's own RSS feeds.

My jaw dropped. Over the past year, each one of our feeds' subscriber base grew over 400 percent. We've offered feeds for well over two years. This past year, syndication hockey-sticked.

RSS, your time has come.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 9, 2007

Name That Feed!

A name may not be everything, but it counts for a heck of a lot.

Variety (my former employer) very thankfully revived Kaiju Shakedown yesterday, the last-word-in-Asian-cinema blog, penned by the peerless Grady Hendrix. The blog had shut down earlier this year to the chagrin of Asian film freaks everywhere.

Rushing to subscribe to the feed at a new URL, I was shocked -- shocked -- to see the title of the feed show up in my Bloglines list as "Blog Entries."

Variety's a brand, for heaven's sake. So's Kaiju Shakedown, down where I live on the tail. Let's hope the error can be chalked up to Day 1 glitches.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 6, 2007

Feeds: How Much Can You Eat?

In an interview last week with author Michael Banks for his forthcoming book, "Blogging Heroes," the conversation naturally turned to RSS feeds. I mentioned my self-imposed feed limit is 200 sources I'm tracking on my Bloglines account. That's my limit. All I can handle.

Interestingly, Mike's finding 200 to be the magic number among his interview subjects. He was kind enough to share the following self-reported feed data:

* Peter Rojas (Engadget) 200

* John Neff (Autoblog) 200

* Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) 220

* David Rothman (Teleread) 200

* Brian Lamm (Gizmodo) “I’ve got about 400 blogs in my RSS feed. I should probably cut some of those out, and probably will.”

* Kristin Darguzas (ParentDish) 120. She was surprised to hear that that is a “managable” number of RSS feeds.

The feeders with an endless capacity seem to be Microsoft -related, for some reason:

* Mary Jo Foley (All About Microsoft) “I subscribe to all the Microsoft RSS feeds, all the MSDN [Microsoft Developer Network] and all the Technet blog feeds they have, which is like 4,000 bloggers. And then I have other Microsoft-related bloggers who I also have in my RSS feeds.”

* Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) “I look at 700 blogs on an average day. I'm the number one Google Reader user in the world. It shoots me 1800 items an evening.”

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 23, 2007

Feedburner Under Google Could Spell Trouble

The consolidation of dominant feed hosting and analytics service FeedBurner under a company with great expectations for its own RSS reader poses a threat to the integrity of all feeds, says Dave Winer.

Winer points out that FeedBurner, which in his opinion held too much power over customer feeds BEFORE Google bought it, could easily abuse its virtual monopoly on feed management. He says it could create problems for rival feed readers like NewsGator and Bloglines by optimizing its process for Google Reader. He says it could force advertising on its customers (unlikely in my opinion).

So now someone at Google "owns" Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone. Reader software might have trouble working with it. They would say "Oh but the new feeds work better with Google Reader, and that's the one most people use." And by the way, more and more that's true these days. But what about other feed suppliers? Do they have to change to work with Google Reader? They will say no, but there may turn out to be practical reasons why they must.

People at Microsoft used to say that Windows isn't ready to ship until Lotus doesn't run. That's not a typo. You'd think it would be the other way around, that a popular operating system would never hold the users of a popular spreadsheet hostage. But it could happen when they have their own spreadsheet and want you to switch. Or if they want everyone to put ads in their feeds. Who would miss a few blogs here and there, don't we all use Blogger anyway (that's one area where they haven't taken over, btw, thankfully).

To Winer's list I'd add the same thing that has many DoubleClick publisher clients, and especially AOL, quaking in their boots: By consolidating their feed and ad management with a company that already handles their search traffic and monetization, these companies are handing Google the keys to the kingdom -- access to audience data, traffic trends and competitive pricing information. That's all data Google, or any of its sales reps acting alone, could use for the benefit of AdSense in general or any AdSense advertiser in particular.

Google ssys it would never use that data and in any case doesn't have the RIGHT to do so, which may be the case, but how will it prevent the data from being used? Someone at Google will have access to it, and someone else at Google will want access to it. How much energy and money is Google prepared to expend to prevent the flow of databases, personnel -- hell, even phone calls -- from one department to another.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 25, 2007

Technorati Thinking Widget-Driven Blog Ads?

Technorati already offers bloggers an array of widgets. They mostly are blog-content related, such as listing top searches, link counts, and tags. Now, the company seems to be considering introducing widgets that display ads.

Or so you'd gather from a survey I just received (as a consumer -- not a journalist) from Technorati.

Coincidentally, I had a long chat last night with Technorati co-founder Peter Hirschberg. He didn't breathe a word about anything widget-related.

Is the project still hush-hush? Peter did indicate new products and initiatives are in the pipeline, and has promised he'll be ready to discuss at least some of them at our Advertising in Social Media event on May 24.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 20, 2007

Easy Send to Mobile Video App

The nascent mobile content space is still determining what shape to take, but many in the industry agree content can't be ported from the Web, but must be made to suite the mobile experience. But there are ways of making the Internet at large more suited for the mini screen. Video, for example, has taken off in popularity through sites like YouTube, and now networks are finding ways to monetize programming on the Web. Is video suited for mobile? "YouTube lends itself to mobile consumption," said Jeff Lanctot, SVP and global media lead for Avenue A/Razorfish, in a meeting a few weeks ago. He referred to the snippets and snacking format the short video clips provide.

Enter mywaves, a mobile application that lets users create channels using a Web interface, then pick up the feeds on their mobile phones. It's carrier agnostic, and free to users. The service has gained word-of-mouth notoriety, and today launched SND2MBL, or send-to-mobile, a Web-to-mobile video marketing offering. Content owners can embed a bit of code on their site to let users send the video on the site to their mobile phones. SND2MBL is free to content owners, if they accept advertising on the mobile feed. Currently advertising is not enabled, but is expected to be enabled shortly. You can check out SND2MBL in action at DJ Skee's site.

Mywaves is also offering an advanced, premium version in lieu of serving ads against the content. The premium version also offers comprehensive audience measurement to let marketers know who is watching, how often a video is forwarded to someone else via mobile "send-to-a-friend" and analysis on audience and reach.

Posted by Enid Burns at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 5, 2007

Amazon Using RSS to Feed Daily Deals

Don't know how long they've been doing it, but Amazon is now offering RSS feeds of its daily "Gold Box" special offers.

Like American Express' feeds, Amazon seems to have snuck these in below the radar. The feed page offers nothing by way of explanation or support. To subscribe, you pretty much have to be up to speed on RSS already.

Still, when major brands adopt RSS, particularly if they're outside the news media sphere, it means feeds are more successfully making inroads into the mainstream.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 15, 2007

News Wire Services Pushing Web 2.0, SEO

Last time I was in a marketing gig, I recall screaming at our rep from one of the major wire services when they started charging us a per-item clipping fee (I think it was $0.50) for snail-mailing us hard copies of our own press releases -- verbatim -- which had been "picked up" on Yahoo News, Google News, and all the other usual suspects.

Now, the news wires have stopped charging and are working hard to sell these and other Web effects to companies as unique advantages. Today, PR Newswire, on of the two leaders in the space, announced FreePRWeb, "Everyone from business owners to consumers and even the local church may submit news and press releases via a global online news and press release distribution service with powerful distribution points such as NBCi News, AskJeeves News, Lycos News, Excite News, Topix News, MSN News and Google News...They are also syndicated through more than 20,000 RSS feeds that get re-published on thousands of Web sites that collectively reach millions of consumers and journalists daily."

Well, yeah, that's exactly what happens when you distribute news via a wire service. What interesting here is the free level of tiered service, as well as the fact Google Checkout will be accepted for payment. That's a real change in how these services do business.

And, all you publishers and Webmasters out there -- it's a great link-building strategy, at least short term. The engines may well have to adjust their algorithms soon against a wave of SEO-optimized press release spam. It'd be nice if they didn't have to -- but I fear this could generate an awful lot of very lightweight "news."

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 11, 2007

WSJ Tests RSS Ads to Atrocious Effect

The Journal appears to have begun inserting graphical ads into its RSS feeds, and do they ever suck. The poor man above appears to have had his faced surgically removed and replaced with CP30's, and as if that weren't bad enough, the sun is giving him the evil eye. The copy is no better: "Put your loved one on the road to recovery." Damn, those Bahamas will mess you up.

Update: Since posting I've seen the same wretched ad in feeds from another Dow Jones site, MarketWatch, and Gawker-owned LifeHacker. So it's a run of network unit.

Update 2: It's a FeedBurner ad. And it's everywhere!

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 2:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 29, 2006

A Big Week for RSS Marketing

The following post was written by Ryan Naraine:

A flurry of RSS marketing announcements crossed the wires this week, including the launch of a new ad-supported aggregator and a service that embeds contextual text links in syndication feeds.

Here’s a sample of the announcements:

RealNetworks’ RealTime: The Seattle-based streaming media delivery firm has pushed into RSS content delivery with the launch of a hybrid desktop/Web-based feed reader. The service will compete with the likes of Bloglines and NewsGator and comes with an ad-serving component. It launches with a partnership with Feedster that allows users to search for feeds within RealTime. Personalized RSS feeds can be created based on keywords, providing an option to RealNetworks to serve contextually relevant advertising.

Text Link Ads Feedvertising: Cincinatti, Ohio-based Text Link Ads has launched a new service called Feedvertising that simplifies the display and delivery of text-based ads in RSS feeds. The service targets both site publishers and advertisers with a marketplace that promises to eschew the page-view and cost-per-click model in favor of a "cost-per-influence" ad-targeting concept. Feedvertising is already delivering text ads in RSS content from several high-profile bloggers, including the TechCrunch network.

Federated Media Publishing: John Battelle's advertising and publishing network is experimenting with a unique concept of displaying RSS content as display ads. Anti-virus vendor Symantec is serving up content generated from its Security Response blog as display ads now appearing on comment pages of Digg and on the home page of Techdirt. On a related note, Gabe Rivera’s Techmeme has launched a “Sponsor Post” section that displays content from blogs as the advertisement. The ads are automatically updated whenever the paid sponsor updates the content on the blogs.

Pheedo: The provider of RSS marketing solutions is teaming up with SimpleFeed to combine their respective RSS marketing expertise. The deal opens Pheedo’s RSS marketing and feed growth services to SimpleFeed customers – helping them generate revenue from their RSS content, increase feed readership and expose their content to an expansive audience. Participating SimpleFeed customers can join the Pheedo network of publishers, offering Pheedo advertisers access to expanded RSS and on-site inventory. In addition, Pheedo can now offer customers new RSS feed layouts that are similar to their web sites and are measurable through SimpleFeed’s templating and URL publishing technology.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 1, 2006

Amex Offers RSS Offers

Amex has adopted RSS. That's big.

One of America's major direct marketers has a new value proposition "Get Information How You Want, When You Want." Cardholders can opt to receive awards program news, travel offers, and offers targeted to specific geographical regions.

The page (you need an account to log-in) explains RSS in concise terms and offers buttons to direct feeds to the major newsreaders.

This is a big win for syndication fans. American Express is a big influencer. Others are sure to follow.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 14, 2006

Lunch with Pheedo

I had lunch today with Bill Flitter, founder and VP marketing of RSS ad network Pheedo.com. Walking up to the restaurant, I knew he'd already arrived. How? I passed his vehicle.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 11, 2006

A Podcasting Paradigm

Last time I learned a new language, there wasn't an Internet. Now that I've started Japanese, I'm finding a wealth of online resources.

One of the best is JapanesePod101.com, a daily podcast. The sponsor is a Tokyo-based translation service, which makes perfect sense. Loyal subscribers -- a very targeted audience -- receive daily brand reinforcement.

I also just discovered the dialogue of each daily lesson is spelled out in the "lyrics" section of each podcast's metatag information. This will vastly supplement the already considerable time spent with the podcast.

This could well be a podcasting paradigm: loyal listeners, a relevant sponsor, high engagement, plus a value add feature that enhances an already very immersive experience.

Omedeto!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 30, 2006

USA Today Airs Talking Tech

USA Today is taking its Personal Technology section to video. Tech columnists Ed Baig and Jefferson Graham will host "Talking Tech" with weekly segments becoming available on Thursdays. Video will be available at tech.usatoday.com or on iTunes.

The initial sponsor is AT&T with its branding campaign launched earlier this year. However preroll and synchronized banner units for Frontier Airlines, VisitFlorida and Microsoft's "The Greatest Asset" spot played before the video during repeated refreshes. Prior to running the preroll unit, the screen says, "Video is always free thanks to support from our sponsor." But at this point AT&T is not clearly visible as the advertiser.

Posted by Enid Burns at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 21, 2006

ClickZ Video Ad Forum - Speaker Podcasts

Our video advertising event last week was sensational -- great content, fantastic speakers, sold out crowd.

If you couldn't make it, you might want to click over to Ernie Landante's blog. He interviewed a number of speakers at the event and is posting a new podcast every day this week.

Enjoy!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 7, 2006

Web Video Comes to TiVo: Ad Opportunities

I just spoke with TiVo's SVP of Programming, Tara Maitra, about the company's new TiVoCast broadband-to-TV offering and what sorts of ad opportunities will come with it.

There's not much to tell. The basic story is it works the same as with any program you pipe in from the airwaves. As you watch the show, you get the advertising that comes with it. Maitro told me TiVo will consider additional marketing opportunities where appropriate, but she declined to go into details.

One of the participating publishers, The New York Times, comes to TiVoCast through the company's new relationship with video distribution platform Brightcove. In a separate Q&A I did with Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire this week, Allaire told me he's thinking of syndicating content to TV as a long-range opportunity and doesn't expect its relationship with the DVR company to benefit its business for many many moons.

TiVoCast will initially include content from the NBA, WNBA, Heavy.com, iVillage, NYT and others.

Posted by Zachary Rodgers at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

CNET Ups its Podcast Count

CNET has a number of regular podcasts on its new CNET Podcast Central site. The whole course of shows is sponsored by Earthlink, with units running on the contents page, and minimal plugs in the audio segments.

Today the publisher said it added four new shows. Those include Gadget Girls, a discussion on tech's influence on pop-culture and gadget reviews; Studio C, an MTV Unplugged, of sorts, with interviews and performances; MP3 Insider talks of digital music, video, hardware and software news; and The Real Deal boils tech talk into palatable bits of information.

The four new shows join existing regulars like Buzz Out Loud, Turn Up the Volume on News.com and Security Bites.

Posted by Enid Burns at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Duct Tape Podcast: All Duct Tape, All the Time

And you thought you knew duct tape.

Henkel Consumer Adhesives is relaunching "Tape Talk," a podcast dedicated to all things duct tape. Six times per year, the 7-10 minutes podcast will cover such duct tape events and topics as the 3rd Annual Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival and a Duck brand duct tape council meeting. The podcast, available on www.ducktapeclub.com, also follows Stuck at Prom Scholarship Contest, duct tape arts and crafts, music "celebrating the many colors of duct tape," and the Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 16, 2006

Evian 'Detox' Campaign on Gawker

AdRants points to a highly unusual ad running on Gawker today. The site invites you to "click for a detoxed version of Gawker." The click strips all ads from the page, other than those from Evian.

Cool idea -- and execution.

The irony is I only visited Gawker after reading AdRant's feed about the ad. I read Gawker, too -- but only the feed. It's getting hard to keep up with innovations in online advertising (which is my job, after all) if I hardly visit Web sites anymore.

Blame it on Bloglines. Problems such as these, on both the advertiser and publisher side, are becoming huge issues.

I wonder how many of them are really aware of this?

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

May 4, 2006

Kebberfegg?

Keberfegg (a name I'll either never remember, or one that will be seared into my brain forever -- can't tell yet) is a way cool way to aggregate and subscribe to RSS feeds on a keyword basis.

The site tool allows you to associate keywords of your choice with predefined categories (e.g. "technology" or "multimedia"). Then, click and subscribe to a wealth of targeted feeds that can keep you very up-to-date on a given topic.

For deeper insight, Search Engine Watch has great coverage of this new tool up today.

Check out Keberfegg -- and the article.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 28, 2006

The San Francisco Feed Feed

What a good idea.

Last night, Pheedo hosted an informal dinner in a San Francisco restaurant to feed on Cajun food -- and to talk feeds. No speeches, no real agenda, just good old fashioned brainstorming from about 40 people involved in RSS from every conceivable angle.

There were journalists, particularly the tech kind such as a C|Net contingent; Steve Gilmore (who was adamant RSS isn't just a coming trend, it's already very much arrived), and of course Pamela and I representing ClickZ. E-mail was represented by Bill Nussey, SilverPOP; Ron Rasmussen represented KnowNow, a company committed to spreading RSS in the enterprise; and of course, companies hoping to monetize ads in RSS feeds including folks from Syndicate IQ and, of course, Pheedo.

No problems were solved regarding RSS adoption or monetization by the time we ducked out of the discussion (it was a very long day at ad:tech, after all). But this kind of evening is a delight; frank, open, provocative, and even controversial conversation about new issues in technology, media and advertising.

There was no real agenda, and zero spin. Thanks Bill, and the rest of the Pheedo team for feeding us so well!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 26, 2006

Pheedo Unveils "Cut-and-Paste" RSS Ads

Rebecca Lieb and I visited the Emeryville offices of RSS advertising firm Pheedo yesterday to chat about its new offering called Ads for Feeds, being launched today. The service allows small publishers to incorporate ads into their RSS feed by simply cutting and pasting code into their feed template. Publishers who participate can also receive a limited number of metrics about their readers' interactions with the feeds, such as ad revenue earned, views of editorial content, clicks and aggregator information. Pheedo's more full-featured solution, which requires the company host the publisher's feeds, is now called Ads for Feeds Plus.

The new Ads for Feeds is sort of a cross between the cut-and-paste RSS ad code available via Google, Yahoo! Publisher Network and Kanoodle, and the analytics services offered by the likes of FeedBurner. Ads can be priced on a CPM or CPC basis, the company says, and Pheedo sells the ads and shares revenues earned with the publishers. (The cut is the same on Ads for Feeds as it is on Ads for Feeds Plus.) Pheedo's working with more than 8,000 publishers these days.

Posted by Pamela Parker at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 3, 2006

What's For Dinner? Not A Feed.

SpecialsByZip.com just launched an e-mail subscription service for New Yorkers. They'll send you a daily e-mail listing the daily specials at local restaurants.

Seems a no-brainer for a city with an estimated 60 percent of meals are eaten out-of-home every day -- the highest dining-out rate in the country.

But e-mail only? No RSS? C'mon guys, if it's about food -- feed us!

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

March 31, 2006

RSS Means Change Your E-Mail Opt-In Model

The double confirmed opt-in e-mail subscription model has always been the highest industry standard. ClickZ's always been mighty proud to be the only publisher in our niche using it, too.

It's important to stay double-confirmed, but I see a change on the horizon the most ethical e-mails (ourselves included) are going to have to address sooner or later. And sooner is better, right?

After requesting a subscription on the Web site, a subscriber must first reply to an confirmation e-mail from the sender. This ensures the person didn't sign up by mistake, or were subscribed by someone else. In the case of ad-supported publications like ours, it proves our readers really want to receive our newsletters.

Now, thanks to the miracle of RSS, a bunch of early adopters (myself included) are migrating their e-mail subscriptions to their RSS readers.

Example: One of the most popular RSS services is Web-based Bloglines. It enables users to create a unique e-mail address for each subscription (e.g. username.27531127@bloglines.com). This helps keep your inbox clear and is a pretty good way to nail mailers who start spamming you or selling their lists to third parties, too.

Yet under this system, I'm unable to subscribe to ClickZ and other publications as my Bloglines address is receive-only. I can't confirm a subscription via e-mail under the subscriber address.

So we're going to look into modifying our double confirmed opt-in model -- without compromising its integrity. Perhaps we should give new subscribers the option of "reply to this e-mail" or "click this link to confirm your subscription."

Any other newsletter publishers out there grappling with this issue yet? My bet is you will be in six months to a year. What changes are your making to your own double opt-in systems?

We'd love to hear input on this issue. I'm moderating a panel on RSS at AdTech SF next month and this is a topic sure to come up.

Posted by Rebecca Lieb at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

See More Posts From:

Today | This Week | This Month