This week: the future of Web sites in a world of RSS, highlights from ION RSS,
new Web 2.0 developments, Techie post of the week.
Future of Web sites
Matt McAlister, VP & General Manager, Online for InfoWorld, wrote this week that RSS is
disintermediating InfoWorld’s Web site. In other words, RSS is eliminating the
middleman – people no longer just get InfoWorld content from the InfoWorld web site. They
can get it from RSS Aggregators and other sites that syndicate some or all of InfoWorld’s
content.
Matt thinks “RSS is doing to the Web today what the Web has been doing to print for
the last several years”. He goes on to say that RSS will create more opportunities for
their business, just as the Web did. However it’ll be “a bit scary”.
Susan Mernit put this into perspective, pointing out that for media companies like
InfoWorld:
“…putting up articles on their web site just isn’t enough anymore–now they need to
distribute via RSS and onto multiple platforms AND have new revenue models AND figure out
where their audience is going–and meet them there (Xbox, anyone?) –and they are going
“Wow, so fast!”
It’s true that small, niche publishers are able to adapt quicker to an RSS world. So
here’s a suggestion for big media – bring some of those niche publishers under your wing
and leverage their position in Web 2.0. To pick a completely random example: if my blog
consistently produces quality content on some of the topics that InfoWorld covers,
then why not hire me as an InfoWorld freelancer? [ed: very subtle Richard!]
ION RSS
While we’re on the topic of gently plugging my services (and I should warn you now,
this ain’t gonna stop until I land some more p/t jobs!), here’s a quick round-up of my
RSS coverage on ION RSS last week:
- RSS in the
Enterprise - RSS for Normal
People and Topic/Tag/Remix Feeds; a re-cap of my January 2005 Read/Write Web
post. - Advertising in RSS –
floodgates open; a report on my Google Adsense for feeds
experiment on R/WW. - Full-text vs Excerpt
feeds; I wax philosophical…and in a later post recant our previous
excerpted practises on ION RSS. - Content has Value:
on alternatives to ads; I start to ponder alternatives to advertising in RSS
feeds… - Ads in RSS should
be measured by branding value, NOT click-through; behold, an alternative theory of my
own!
Web 2.0 developments
Here are some new Web 2.0 apps and docs I noticed this week:
- new version of reBlog, a remix-blogging tool for
people who “prefer curating content to writing original posts.” (example: Eyebeam) - Erik Benson‘s All Consuming becomes part of the Robot Co-op suite of tools. All
Consuming aggregates all types of reviews, from movies to music to books and more. I like
where the Robots are headed with this… - TiddlyWiki, intriguingly described as “a
reusable non-linear personal web notebook”. - Enhanced Yahoo!
Messenger – now has free PC-to-PC calls (a challenge to Skype), photo sharing, Yahoo! 360 community tie-ins,
increased spam protection. - Paper Airplane and The Two Way
Web; I haven’t read through this paper yet (the title sounds like a 70’s rock
supergroup!), but it sounds fascinating.
Want more? Check out the Web Apps Compendium
v1.0.
Techie Post of the Week: chmod 777 web
IBM blogger James Snell
out-geeks everybody this week by comparing Web 2.0 to an FTP
command (chmod 777 means to make a file writable… and yes I had to look it up). In
laymens terms, James says:
People are starting to realize that the web is more than just a publishing medium.
It’s a place where you can (or should be able to) actually do stuff. Web sites
that let youdostuff are more important than web sites that only let
youread stuff.
Right on James and keep up the good work blogging at Big Blue.
That’s a wrap for another week!
