Standards

The new RSS metric, Average Daily Readership, opened many key questions for both marketers and publishers. Today, Stuart Watson of Syndicate IQ responds in-full to all the questions asked, giving detailed answers to what ADR means and how it’s calculated.

As RSS deployement moves in to different markets, new extensions to the format will be needed to meet specific market requirements. A financial content provide is proposing a new RSS 2.0 category element, which would standardize the use of stock ticker symbols for financial content.

Average Daily Readership is a new RSS metric, just recently introduced by Syndicate IQ. Dubbed as the solution to wider RSS marketing adoption, it does leave some questions open …

Reading one the latest Shel Israel interviews again proved that many people out there, including quite a few prominent bloggers, don’t understand the fundamental relations between e-mail, RSS, blogs and e-zines. But I think I finally have the easy definition or comparison …

We did an incredible joint interview on RSS metrics last week with Dick Costolo of Feedburner and Stuart Watson of Syndicate IQ, two of the handful of companies that are leading the RSS metrics way. In part 1 of the interview we cover the differences between different RSS metrics approaches and how they relate to RSS targeting and personalization.

As already noted, ripping off syndicated content for commerical purposes without RSS publisher consent is becoming an increasing problem in the RSS world. I’m calling out to all RSS publishers to put down your comments on what are acceptable republishing practices as far as you are concerned, to create a list of best practices and guidelines for everyone …

I spoke quite extensively with Fergus Burns of Nooked while attending the International Direct Marketing Fair in London. In this interview, recorded on-location, we discuss the technology approaches to RSS metrics and the corporate RSS marketplace. The interesting thing is that Fergus believes that using unique URLs to track RSS subscribers might not be the best solution, since it puts a higher bandwidth strain on online RSS aggregation services.

For those who have a blog, comment spam has been the bane of online existence. I actually turned comments off on my blog following a rash of porn-related comment spam that had my parents asking questions.
If you are reading this and are not sure what comment spam is, think of adds for “enlargement” pills [...]

Chris, you’re a well-known syndication enthusiast and your voice is heard by thousands of people (including me) reading your site and blog. I think if this problem could be heard by aggregator and blog tool authors and webmasters, our Web life would be made easier.
Since RDF/RSS/Atom’s invention, we can read sites w/o having visiting them, [...]

“I am absolutely obsessed with the potential for XML news feeds causing an “informational awakening” on the Internet. However, unless we get our collective act together, I do not see a bright future for the budding technology ahead. In order to assuage the dilemma, I have developed a new XML document type that I hope can achieve a solution. It is called “Streaming Document Format (SDF)” and its name conveys exactly what it does to most any web surfer. Some will consider it an insult and an upset, but I see it as a gift. Please allow me to tell you why…”

Shashank Tripathi writes: “Larry Seltzer posed a question that had egged me for a while about a year or so ago: Isn’t RSS a “Really Silly Standard”? He wondered if RSS is any better than mail subscriptions… I am increasingly convinced that RSS is not a silly standard.”

Yet another fool rented my chest this evening. He’s selling ‘I Love RSS‘ t-shirts, mugs, caps, etc. on CafePress! This happened to be my 99th drawing, so I added a little extra TLC for 100:

View the slides on Atom in Depth, a presentation from the XML Conference by Sam Ruby. The presentation details the ins and outs of the Atom specification, an XML-based Web content and metadata syndication format (think a different brand of RSS). It is an emerging format for creating, syndicating, and archiving weblog information.

Via Dylan Greene: “Today I can’t keep track of who writes the comments. Did I see that person before? I wish I could tell. I’d like to see who is showing up in the comments I read across many different blogs. Who do I always agree or disagree with? Can I track their comments even [...]

Jeremy Allaire proposes a format he calls RSS-Data, saying, “What’s needed is a simple data language that can enhance RSS 2.0 applications, expanding it’s role into a much broader range of data-oriented applications, rather than it’s current, predominant focus on news and content-oriented applications.”
He also says
My hope is that RSS-Data will open up a much [...]

Here’s another data syndication format that aims to compete with (read: replace) RSS. Via Morbus Iff: “I would like to propose, nay, admonish, that the name of the format and spec should be Atom, that the current naming vote should be killed, and we should move on to grander things without the auspices of ‘what’s [...]

This is an idea worth exploring, as it may help RSS n00bz further understand the format’s significance. Via Russell Beattie: “What I’m talking about is putting an XSL Stylesheet header in your RSS documents so that when a browser like Moz or IE6 sees it, it’ll render the XML instead of dumping raw tags in [...]

Via Greg Reinacker (author of NewsGator): “This seems like a reasonable idea to me…with the obvious benefit that a user could just click on the link, and the aggregator could add a subscription to the feed. As opposed to the situation today, where if the user clicks on a feed link, they’ll see (at best) [...]

Furthering RSS Auto-Dsicovery I think is a worthy discussion that I hope can avoid yet another standards war. I think whatever becomes of this directory format be inclusive of many of the formats that feeds exist in RSS x.9x, 1.0, 2.0, Echo in addition to Web services.

Technical Recommendations for Avoiding Interoperability Issues Related to the Use of Non-ASCII Characters within Elements