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Branding the RSS feed

John Heilemann of Business 2.0 / CNNMoney.com has an interview with FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo today. In addition to the interview, the article has a nice overview of RSS, its recent history, and thoughts on what’s to come in the industry. I particularly agree with Dick’s opinion on the state of RSS:

Like the Web 10 years ago, he argued, feeds had reached a tipping point. “You can’t stop this train,” he told them. “Content is going to be syndicated and consumed all over the place. Your job is to figure out how to turn that into an opportunity.”

There’s also a discussion of FeedBurner’s feed advertising network which I think has the potential to lead the way in this niche. None of the players in the feed advertising space (Google AdSense for Feeds, Yahoo Publisher Network, Pheedo), have impressed me other than what FeedBurner is currently doing. I’m curious about how they plan to balance web based advertising with their feed advertising, but overall they have a significant number of publishers to become the dominant player. I would have thought Google would have made more headway, but I’ve seen very little additional happen since they announced the program a while ago.
And just as a side note – Business 2.0 continues to write about RSS feeds, yet I can’t find a feed for their content without getting all the other CNNMoney content

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67 Comments

  1. Hi Tom, curious if you would expand on your thoughts on how Pheedo could improve? Would you mind sending me an email? We are always looking for user feedback.

    Best regards,
    Bill Flitter
    Founder, Pheedo