Tag: Marketing

I’ve been having a conversation with Andy Beard on a post of his entitled “Google are killing the future of RSS“. For some reason, my most recent comment has not appeared on the page. I can only assume that he did not appreciate its tone. So, I have decided to post the comment here:

The task list examples are bogus. It’s the user’s personal information, not the publisher’s. The user should be able to do what he wants with it, even accidentally share it with the world.

The financial information and marketing examples do have some merit. (Why someone would subscribe to a feed full of marketing speak is beyond me. But whatever.)

However, I don’t think any of these cases are strong enough to warrant adding a no-sharing restriction to feeds. (I’m taking back the “more power to you” statement in my last post. That was an incredibly stupid thing to say.) I’ve come to the realization that what we’re really talking about is a DRM scheme. We’ve already seen the kind of damage that can be done with DRM in the music, film, and ebook industries. Adding it to RSS for some short-term gain would be a disaster.

There’s another programmatic way you could solve this problem. Simply prevent applications that allow for sharing to access your feeds. Very easy to implement. It would also help you with your goal of having less readers.

I’m not normally one to praise a marketing guy, but Seth Godin seems to have a lot of good insights about how to sell a product in today’s world. His recent presentation at Google (thanks to Robert Scoble) is recommended viewing for both its style and its content.

There are some people out there who think that Seth is more hype than substance. But when you get past the storytelling, the buzzwords, and the smooth presentation style, you’ll find truth that, while sometimes obvious, a lot of companies just don’t understand. Honestly, when was the last time the company you work for set out to do something remarkable?