Wired is running a short report on the increasing number of ads in RSS feeds. Despite much gnashing of teeth over this issue, advertising in feeds is inevitable, and hardly a bad thing. The price of convenience; no free lunch; etc. etc.. Still, we see comments like this—
"RSS is a syndication format. It's not well-suited to carrying ads," said Andy Baio, the author of popular blog Waxy.org. "It's designed for syndicating content, and content only. No navigation, no design, no advertisements."
BFD. The Internet wasn't designed for nearly everything that now transpires on it. This is more like it, from Jason Fried, author of the Signal vs. Noise blog (which runs Overture-provided, FeedBurner-powered RSS ads)—
"All RSS is is just another content-delivery medium," he said. "Someone has to pay for that content, either through subscription fees or through advertising. I don't know why (RSS) should be sacred or any different than a website."
As in any other medium, it is the taste with which advertising is designed that determines its acceptance.
1. [[ It’s not well-suited to carrying ads - Andy Baio ]]
That depends on how RSS is interpreted. RSS is simply technical a specification - it's an implementation detail. The implementation determines suitability. And news readers are not the only applications that consume and present RSS content. Furthermore, RSS is *well* suited for carrying links; even links that are proxies for advertisements.
[[ As in any other medium, it is the taste with which advertising is designed that determines its acceptance. ]]
Agree - and even [when] tasteless ads emerge in feeds, content consumers can easily decide if they want to see them. Any attempt to dictate how a [relatively abstract] XML specification should (or should not) be used is silliness in my view.
--bf
Posted at 4:46AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Bill French