RSS Feeds

Just testing Squeet… Thanks! One more test.

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This is extremely cool – RSS is now integrated into Yahoo! Mail and Alerts (from TechCrunch).

Think about that for a sec – how many of your users have a Yahoo! email account? And how many of them use web-based email services? And how many of those users might now be willing to learn about the whole RSS/Blog thing… since they already have a reader, and it most likely will make more sense to them (at least those using Yahoo! mail)?

Better yet – how many libraries teach classes on opening an email account with hotmail, yahoo mail, etc? It’s a short leap to focusing primarily on Yahoo! Mail, adding a small section on the RSS component, and “helping” class attendees subscribe to their first RSS feed (namely, your library’s feed). Suddenly, those users are learning about RSS from the library, experiencing what RSS does… while at the same time seeing all your cool programs, news, events, materials, etc (depending on what you stuff into the feed).

What do you think?

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Just saw this post this morning.

I think describing RSS as “automated web surfing” is a pretty good description – what do you think?

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Google has been testing out ads for RSS feeds. Take a peek at this image, taken in my bloglines account. If you go to the actual blog page, you don’t see the ad – it only appears in the RSS feed!

Honestly, I’m not sure what I think about that. On the one hand, some bloggers can probably make a few bucks… so that’s good – it’s something to show for all their hard work. But on the other hand, I like ad-free feeds. I really DON’T like USAToday or the Drudge Report’s pop-ups – thankfully, my pop-up blocker usually catches them. But they’re still nuisances (they aren’t caught all the time.

Or those pesky ads that pop-up on the page, right as I start to read something… and force me to waste my precious time looking for the “close this ad” X to click.

Either way, though – it should be an interesting development to watch.

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