MediaVidea

Why RSS will rule

The Peanut Butter Manifesto didn’t say anything about Yahoo abandoning RSS. Steve Rubel points out that Yahoo recently shipped three sites without feeds. He reasons Yahoo wants its pageviews back.

Perhaps Yahoo was worried about the reports that Google will become the #1 site, traffic wise anytime next year.

Yahoo prides itself on actually owning some content and it wants users to see that content locked on its site. It is a stupid variation on the Walled Garden philosophy.

Steve Rubel shouldn’t worry. It is no trend.

1. RSS is a free advertising tool. It is a token of pride for many bloggers when they claim to have so-so many subscribers. By displaying that old portal mentality, Yahoo shows perhaps that despite all that Web 2.0 buyouts (Flickr, Del.icio.us), it is just a plain old media accompany.

2. If it was all about Page Views, meaning advertising money, RSS now has advertising built into it.

3. RSS acts a filter for users – by looking at the headlines, we decide whether to g and read the rest of story. Content quality matters over all. Yahoo wants to take the power of choice away.

Hell, even the Church of England has a prayer feed.

4. RSS is becoming a habit. The next year, we will see enhanced RSS integration with emails. Think newsletters in form of RSS feeds. Think alerts, time-sensitive information and more, integrated with your email and IM.

posted by Pramit Singh @ 3:20 PM