RSS- the next steps?

Jeff Jarvis rights in his blog, about what he is missing from RSS tools today and what they must incorporate to grow.



Blog Entry



1. Unique users. If content creators cannot report unique users they cannot get advertising. Period. So RSS readers must set unique-user cookies. Period.



2. Traffic. RSS readers must allow content creators to count displays -- versus just downloads -- of RSS items.



3. Advertising. If content creators cannot put advertising on feeds, they will not give full content and will give only headlines to link back to their sites where they have the ads. But partial feeds are a pain, right? So there's the carrot/stick: Give them ads, they will give you content. That's the way the world works.



4. Brand. I'm adding this one. As a reader, I find it frustrating that I can't see the brand of a feed unless I scroll up on FeedDemon and read the one line atop the the screen. Brand matters to the content creator, of course, but it also can matter to the reader: You want to know what you're reading.



5. Navigation. I'm adding this one, too. But I know I'm not alone here: Like many RSS fans, I use the feeds to alert me that something is new and if it is of the slightest interest, I prefer to read the post on the web page with full functionality. It's a pain to get to that web page now. The easy solution to Nos. 4 & 5 is to include a brand element that is also clickable to the creator's web page.

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Feeding me -- sending me any kind of content anytime anywhere on any device -- is the promise of this medium in an ever-connected world and RSS will be at the core of that. This is just the beginning.





Companies like NewsGator, FeedBurner and Pheedo appear to do different bits of this world. NewsGator enables one to read the same RSS feeds both on mobile and the PC, NewsGator & FeedBurner let content provider track and Pheedo is trying to handle the RSS Advertising.



We are still missing context and personalization to make the whole experience more effective.