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April 20, 2005
Broken Links, RSS Abuse and Beyond
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
I have written before about advertising being inserted into RSS feeds, and that is increasing. (Image from Case Western Reserve.)
I'm not just talking about RSS items that are in fact links to ad pages, but RSS items that, while containing links to stories, have additional ads inserted into them.
Now there's another, far more dangerous abuse of the RSS system, phony links.
Phony Links are RSS items from registration-only sites. Most U.S. newspapers are now requiring registration. RSS feeds from these sites now go to sign-in pages, not to the stories themselves. In other words the link is a bait-and-switch. It doesn't go to content, but to a sales pitch.
The AP is abetting that requirement by demanding royalties for online content.
After January 1, AP stories can't be redistributed without payment, so newspapers should make that clear in Robot.Txt files. It would also be wrong to have RSS feeds for such stories, because it's likely nearly all will be going behind registration firewalls.
The next step is going to be charging for RSS feeds. Remember those buttons at the top of this item? Subscribing to many of those feeds next year will require that you put up some money. Guaranteed.
The rule should be simple. If you're not going to let people see what's behind a link, don't make that page an RSS feed. Otherwise it's pure advertising, with no editorial content behind it whatever.
The people who run RSS need to make a decision on how they feel about this, or else it will be made for them.
Comments (1)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Business Strategy | Copyright | Internet | Investment | Journalism | blogging | computer interfaces | e-commerce | online advertising
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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. Tony on April 23, 2005 11:10 PM writes...
This post strikes me as a little alarmist, though I could be wrong (of course).
However, one thing I do know is that, of the six buttons you've displayed, only the first three have anything to do with newsfeeds.
A quick Google search shows that Spam Poison is a script that generates fake emails for spam email address harvesters; that Blog Explosion is some kind of site that promises to bring traffic to your blog; and of course the Firefox button is just a bit of viral marketing for the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox web browser.
Perhaps I'm just seeing this post in light of a previous post which prooved to be factually incorrect, but this post just doesn't sit quite right with me.
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