_This article is by Guest Contributor Kate Trgovac._
For me, 2005 will be remembered as the year my feedreader exploded. There is a lot of great content out there. Of course, great content existed prior to 2005, but this was the year where small content publishers took advantage of RSS to reach niche markets and Main Stream Media seemed to finally buy in. These are the feeds that I never miss:
Category: Feeds
_This article is by Guest Contributor Kate Trgovac, reporting on the recent “BlogOn”:http://www.blogonevent.com/blogon2005 conference._
“The Feed Frenzy: Exploring New Channels for One-to-One Marketing” discussed the use of “RSS feeds”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29 as a marketing channel, particularly how they fit into the mix vis-a-vis e-mail marketing. Led by “Scott Rafer”:http://rafer.wirelessink.com/, former CEO of “Feedster”:http://www.feedster.com/, it included panelists from Yahoo!, Sun and ESPN.
Scott Gatz, Senior Director of My Yahoo! (*very* cool job) shared the results (Oct 2005) of a recent study conducted by Yahoo! and Ipsos Reid. 4% of Internet users *say* they are using RSS, but in reality 31% *are* actually using RSS for content syndication. And it’s not just for geeks – the profile of RSS users mirrors the profiles of Internet users at large (though it tends to skew a little younger, a little more educated and a little more male). They subscribe to an average of six feeds and use My Yahoo! or Firefox (livebookmarks) as their primary method for reading RSS.
Following on this information, Rafer tossed out the question, “How can feeds work as a marketing channel?”
_This is a Guest Contribution by Mitch Joel._
Maybe I got a little over excited but I don’t think so. I think there comes a time in every person’s life when they read something that they knew, felt or saw coming but never put it into words.
It happened to me.
It happened when I read the article, “Inside The New World Of Listenomics by Bob Garfield”:http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=46329 _(registration required)_. Garfield is an ad critic for Ad Age Magazine and also the author of “And Now A Few Words From Me”:http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071403167/imho0b-20 (a brilliant read on the advertising world) and his take on branding and how it is evolving really drove home some strong messages.