SFGate.com's New RSS Reader

By Steve Rubel
Expert Author
Article Date: 2006-02-08

There are tons of good ideas flowing in response to my writer's block call for help. Keep them coming!

Charlie Wood suggests I take a look at a new co-branded RSS reader from Newsgator and the San Francisco Chronicle. Charlie asks if there's something wrong with them republishing feeds and attaching their own ads. Well, they're not as you can see from the screen grab below. But what if they did?

I see a new media model emerging for aggregators to distribute feeds, pull in ads and then share the associated revenue with Long Tail publishers. For example, what if Bloglines started running contextual ads around RSS feeds? The publisher could then earn a cut from every ad a Bloglines customer clicks while viewing his/her feed and so would Bloglines.

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About the Author:
Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

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