Dave Winer at the Really Simple Syndication blog opines that the latter (RSS is the ad) is better than the former (ads in RSS). Along the way, he slams Weblogs Inc. founder Jason Calacanis, who signs my PayPal stubs. So naturally I'm going to respond. Winer uses our flagship site Engadget as an example of a full-post RSS feed that includes ads.

"So they put an ad for Bose at the end of every post. My aggregator mangles it, but it's a minor distraction compared to the other crap I have to put up with in my spyware-infected laptop, so what the hell, I stay subscribed. But every time I see that mangled ad for Bose I think of Jason Calcanis and what a smarmy dude he is. It makes me think less of Bose. So maybe Jason will read this and come up with a feed for influencers like me who subscribe to his feed in aggregators that don't deal with his ads very well. One can hope."

Winer then proposes partial-post RSS feeds that draw readers to the blog site where they read full content and are exposed to ads. Fair enough, and not a new idea. But is ad-mangling (which I do not experience in the Engadget feed) the only problem? If so, it's a trivial consideration, one that will eventually be fixed in newsreaders, and hardly a philosophical point. Mangled ads are not the product of "smarmy" operators. I can say first-hand that Weblogs Inc. is simply figuring out a new business along with everybody else, and with more transparency and integrity than some. A good deal of thought, design, and feedback solicitation goes into the RSS advertising from this network.

Whether the feed contains ads, or is the ad—this is a business and design decision with very little philosophical resonance. There are gigantic advantages to the user of receiving full posts in the newsreader. There is nothing inherently wrong with monetizing a full-post RSS feed. I remember when the Web first started becoming commercial, and the outrage that accompanied that transformation. Now, though some Web-advertising tactics are objectionable, the fact of Web advertising is not disputed. RSS is a relatively new medium that is inevitably bound for commercialization. How it is done is more important than whether it is done.