Comments on: Would a big media company lose traffic if it supported RSS?

By: Dan W

Dan W — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 22:01:53 +0000

Functional Feeds
If I can read the whole story in my feed reader, that is the best. If I read enough to determine a story is interesting and have to click through to a browser window to read it in entirety, that’s ok (this is where the feed provider makes money). If the feed provides too little information for me to decide whether the article is interesting without me going to the browser, I consider it broken, and am likely to remove the feed from my reader. Additionally, if my primitive reader can only download the latest posting (these exist) I also consider it broken.

By: jason brown

jason brown — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:09:40 +0000

not if they have links to other, related, stories within their feeds. and, lots of related links on the page those feeds link to. one of the best sites for keeping you clicking is the bbc. instead of making you register or pay for content, every story stays on the net, and is linked to the latest story, so that readers can see how the story developed. bbc doesn’t carry ads (but does get millions from a broadcast license fee) but there’s no reason others couldn’t follow the same model + ads.

By: Rafael Cosentino

Rafael Cosentino — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 17:04:22 +0000

There many additional ways to make a feed carry some type of value for the providing brand/site. You can insert links to related stories and/or links back to your site. You might also include a double click call to a rich media banner that could be used to collect email addresses.