One of the most challenging things about new technology is having to adapt to it and not being able to predict how it will influence things. I'm particularly interested in RSS feeds in this regard. Feeds are great, because they make it really easy to check a number of blogs that you're interested in, without having to actually go to the site in question to check to see if there's new content. It's incredibly convenient; I subscribe to almost 30 feeds, some of which are only updated once or twice a week, and others that give me 30+ new articles a day. That's great for site owners, because it means that they know there are people regularly reading the stuff they write.
That being said, it's also a challenge, because it means that those people aren't seeing the site itself--they're just getting the posts. Your site design, at that point, becomes more or less meaningless, as it's not being seen. All that people see is what you write, in whatever format their RSS reader shows it to them. In many ways, this reinforces the old web truisim that "content is king," because the only thing that matters in an RSS feed situation is how often you put out new content and how good it is--if it's subpar content, people will quickly unsubscribe.
Ad revenue can also be hurt by RSS feeds--if nobody is coming to your site, they aren't seeing the ads that could conceivably bring in revenue through pay-per-click programs like google's.
RSS feeds are by no means new; according to wikipedia they've been around for about ten years, but they've only really become popular in the last four or five. Clearly, they haven't had enough of an impact to make web design or site ads obsolete, but it's certainly something worth thinking about. When you're writing something for a blog or website with RSS enabled, many of the people reading your posts--and in particular those who are most interested in your posts, who have taken the time to subscribe--will not be seeing your post on your site, with all the bells and whistles you've added there. The moral seems to be: Make sure that everything you write on your blog can stand on its own.
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4 comments:
It's like you need to have separate design concerns with each post, making each one "stand on its own" like you said. You think you should have links to your site in each blog so someone reading the RSS can link back?
-bk
Interesting. I honestly hadn't thought about the fact that RSS does detract away from revenue generated through ads. Great if the content stands on its own, but then again, if no one's coming your site, can you afford to keep it without ad revenue? Not that I'd mind seeing the ads diminish on the Internet.
Those feeds won't be free forever...
Yeah, that's sadly true; ads have started showing up in some of my feeds, and I hate it. Slashdot is particularly egregious in this regard, which makes me sad.
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