The RSS Weekly webcast today went well, I thought. I’d be curious to get some feedback from the audience, whatever there was of it.
A recurring topic was the metrics required of RSS readers/feeds for advertising purposes. If full-text feeds are the desired goal, then, yes, advertising models need to work for all parties (readers, marketers, and publishers). But I am not convinced that full-text feeds are necessary/desirable in all cases, both as a reader and as a publisher. Sure, like many, I appreciate the ‘normalization’ of the content that results from blending many feeds into a reader. But in many cases, I find the notification of the content availability is really all I want. I spend plenty of time sifting through content of different forms on different topics. I don’t want more than a headline, for instance, for most of the MacCentral feeds. And Tim Bray’s posts that require a visit to his website don’t bother me. The browser is better for longer material. Maybe that’s just me.
The FeedBurner folks, and their stats, got some nice airtime, in absentia, thanks to Rafat Ali and my explanation. Also, it didn’t seem like many people had looked at their log files, and noted the data provided by the Yahoo FeedSeeker spider. Given the panel’s expertise, that surprised me. But I learned some things, too, so I guess it was worth the 120 minutes of my time. I look forward to meeting Rafat Ali in person at BlogOn. I don’t think we’re on the same panel.