The Reach - Podcasting and other Portable Media Strategies

Yesterday, Steve Rubel articulated the issues around RSS and large, profitable web properties - specifically Yahoo!.  He updates today with a broader discussion of this issue here. I’ve been discussing this in presentations for the past year that RSS, while a phenomenal “new” service that web users can benefit from, requires a web property focused on pageviews to rethink their advertising strategy.

Namely, should a frequent reader only subscribe to your feeds, there is NO reason for them to come back to your website.  That is, unless you are primarily an e-commerce website.  So, can you monetize your RSS feeds significantly enough to replace the the money you’ll see disappear from your CPM reduction?  So far, advertising in RSS feeds is still nascient, so I’m thinking that you won’t be able to.  Thus, those web properties focused on ad sales to survive have to reconsider how quickly they adopt an RSS strategy. 

The big surprise for me is that Yahoo! appears to not have considered this when they started or at least when they saw RSS taking off.  Poor strategic planning, guys.

What do you think CNN, WSJ, and Time should/will do in light of this discussion?  AOL already has enough revenue problems and now, they have a new leader (Randy Falco) who doesn’t appear to appreciate email - is that a sign that he’ll adopt RSS or that he doesn’t yet know what it stands for….?

You can take the amount of blog headlines (or mainstream media for that matter, but I wouldn’t expect it too much from them) on RSS one of two ways.  Either a) it has now become “table stakes” and the technology crowd assumes you’re using it - OR - b) it is not mainstream for anyone else to use other than the crowd in a). (Which assumes you’re using it, but may be mistaken).

While IE7 makes it “daily life” compatible, this post from Stuart Brown lists all the specialty applications that pick up RSS.  The title of his post suggests otherwise, but it really is only a product comparison.  It appears that IE7 doesn’t have wide enough spread adoption to make it into his Feedburner list of applications used while subscribing to his blog.  Frank Gruber, from Somewhat Frank also comments with a similar discussion, but at least mentions IE7.

My question (formed by running a podcasting business) is what is the real adoption rate of RSS and will the mainstream truly see the advantage that most of us geeks and semi-geeks see?  Stay tuned.

“The gloves come off”, as we would say here in the U.S - in other words, a fight has begun.  Competing specifications for content syndication, long thought a dead issue, have been revived by this post from DeWitt Clinton and response by Robert Scoble.  DeWitt then follows up with another response, for a good ongoing discussion.

Atom may be a better specification - I’m not an engineer, so I can’t comment intelligently on it from that point of view.  But, from a marketing perspective, let me say this:

Sony’s Betamax was a better technology than JVC’s VHS.  Does anyone remember that battle?

I’m not claiming to be prophetic here.  I’m just noticing that buzz and adoption of RSS has swamped Atom.  Is that a guarantee of widespread adoption?  It could be - only time will tell.  I’d be wary of basing my business decisions only on the fact that Atom is a better specification, though.