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November 17, 2004
RSS Spam
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
Thanks to those lovely folks at Newsgator, I've been enjoying an RSS feed on topics of interest, sent to my e-mail box, for the last month.
It's useful. It gives me great stories. But here's a dirty little secret. It's also filled with spam.
Want some examples? Let's go to my inbox today and find a few:
Spam is like water. Once you get a trickle you will soon get a flood. With no one to enforce rules on what is a legitimate RSS transmission and what's just an advertisement, this noise is going to drown out the news signal very, very quickly.
Comments (2)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Copyright | Internet | Journalism | blogging | law | spam
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Dave H. on November 17, 2004 12:42 PM writes...
Hey Dana:
I don't really understand how a feed could be called SPAM. I've always thought of SPAM as "unsolicited commercial messages", however delivered. But in the case of an RSS/XML feed, I've actively asked my app to go fetch it: it's hardly unsolicited. Don't you have to subscribe to individual feeds with Newsgator? Can you not instantly "unsubscribe" by simply not fetching it?
You may get duped by unscrupulous marketer, but it's pretty easy to drop the sub if this is the case.
I've honestly never had a feed forced into my computer(s) by any means other than my positive assertion to subscribe.
Be well,
Permalink to CommentDave H.
2. Tariq Mustafa on November 18, 2004 07:27 AM writes...
Dana might be a little incorrect in calling this 'RSS Spam'. However, there is no doubt that having 'just commercial' contents in places where one would expect 'news & articles' is surely something that at least 'sound' like spam.
When I click the 'live bookmarks' (the fancy name of RSS) of NY Times on my Firefox every morning, I expect to see Headline News and not 'NY Times New Promotional Offers'.
Permalink to Comment