Just noticed on the Technorati blog:

Technorati Teams With The Associated Press to Connect Bloggers To More Than 440 Newspapers Nationwide

Peter Hirshberg - May 23, 2006.

Technorati and the Associated Press this morning initiated a service to connect bloggers to more than 440 AP member newspapers nationwide.

The Associated Press is the world's largest and oldest news service organization serving media outlets worldwide; it's a fundamental backbone to the mainstream media. Several months ago we and The Associated Press began to talk about about how citizen-generated media could enhance the AP in their mission to be "the essential global news network."

Increasingly, what the blogosphere says about a news story becomes part of a more complete story, lending diverse perspectives and often expert commentary. The AP believed it was increasingly important to deliver the living blogosphere as a compliment to their their core professional news product.

Today, as a first step, Technorati is now connecting bloggers to the more than 440 AP member web sites in the U.S. that take the AP's Hosted Custom News product, taken by local papers such as the Buffalo News or the Sun Journal. The new service will bring blogger commentary about AP news stories to communities large and small throughout the USA, giving bloggers a voice in trusted local papers throughout the nation. For many news readers, this will be their first exposure to the blogosphere with national, international, business and sports news presented along side links to blogger commentary and perspective.

Tags: new news networks, merging blogs into the mainstream, evolution, maturity

Powered by Qumana

Stowe Boyd is a well-known presence in the blogging world, and in some areas of the world of social networks online.  He was previously President of Corante.com, a well-known online hub for information and opinions about technology and its social and economic impacts.

It look like this session being offered by Stowe at Reboot, one of Europe's premier *social software* and online social networks conferences, is a future-oriented look at a time when the majority of people will be using online capabilities and interconnectivity to carry out activities in a rich virtual social context.

The Revolution Will Be Socialized: Social Architecture and The Future of Online Markets


Apps Are a Collection of Functions, Right? Wrong. -- The conventional wisdom about apps is all wrong.

Functionality Is Secondary: The Social Dimension -- People are the center of the universe 2.0

Start with Individuals: All The Reasons Why -- People want immediate payback, so you have to give it to them...

We Live in Networks: A World of Connections -- ...but connecting people together in the context of some activity is the most critical thing any app can do

Online Markets -- Making something more liquid.

The Revolution Will Be Socialized -- All ecommerce in the future will be embedded in a rich social context

What is Reboot ?

reboot8 is a community event for the practical visionaries who are at the intersection of digital technology and change all around us... 2 days. 400 people. A journey into the interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness and many more areas. Applied towards us as individuals, citizens, teachers, culture workers, entrepreneurs, creators and change makers.

Tags: Stowe Boyd, Reboot, wirearchy

Powered by Qumana

Via SavetheInternet.com

Bipartisan Victory in the House
May 25th, 2006 by tkarr


The broad, nonpartisan movement for Internet freedom notched a major victory today, when a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee passed the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006″ — a bill that offers meaningful protections for Network Neutrality, “the First Amendment of the Internet.”

20 members of the Commitee (6 Republicans and 14 Democrats) voted for the bipartisan Bill, and only 13 against.

Today’s vote would have been unthinkable three weeks ago. It shows that the politicians are listening to the vast number of citizens who don’t want the Internet to become the private domain of the cable and telephone monopolies. Today’s vote is a milestone for the fast-growing movement to protect the public interest and defend Internet freedom.

Tags: net neutrality, save the internet

Powered by Qumana

One of the great things about working for Qumana is getting to work from home. After the Lycos deal was announced the local paper was interested in talking to be about blogging, the Lycos deal, and most of all how I've been able to do this from the Island. Here is the full-text of the article ... with the picture scanned in :) .

Attack of the Blog: Islander on home page of Internet craze
Salt Spring-based Tris Hussey rides tech-sector success wave

By SEAN MCINTYRE
Driftwood Reporter
When 36-year-old software designer Tris Hussey first encountered the world of blogging back in 2004, he predicted the new medium would mark a sea change rivaled only by Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 15th century.

Today he’s turned what started out as a passion for technology and a love of communication into a modern-day tech-sector success story. And he’s done it all from a basement suite on Salt Spring Island’s north end.

“When I first got involved, I thought there was too much information,” he said during a recent interview. “Today, the amount of information out there is explosive.”

For the uninitiated, Hussey added, the sheer volume of data on just about any topic under the sun can trigger information overload. Knowing how and where to draw the line is an integral part of the learning process.

“It’s important to read outside your bubble, but you have to pick and choose who you’re going to read,” he said.

For millions of computer users around the world, the blogging boom is the best thing since, well, real living communities. Not only do blogs provide a space where people with varied interests can meet up, discuss and exchange information with each other, but anybody with access to a computer, an Internet connection and something to say can get involved.

“Blogs give individuals the ability to publish on their own, contribute to other discussions and find a place for their opinion,” Hussey said.

Blogs differ from more traditional home pages in that users can easily upload text, pictures, audio clips and even video to the Internet with only minimal computer knowledge. With help from free blog editing software like Blogger and WordPress, anybody can get in on the game and today’s blogs are published from all corners of the world in virtually every language.

The specific definition of a blog, or web log, is difficult to pin down since the medium is undergoing constant change. Wherever they’re headed, Husssey said, blogs have certainly come a long way from their origins as a collection of personal online diaries kept by small groups of computing enthusiasts.

Among the estimated 75,000 blogs started up on the Internet each day are an eclectic blend of opinions, interests and views on every topic imaginable. From relatively trivial matters such as where and how to drink your coffee, to the recent Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting from the heart of hurricane-battered New Orleans, blogs are here to stay. Even family blogs are popping up frequently as an alternative to the more conventional family album or scrapbook.

Hoping to capitalize on the blogging rush, Hussey, along with a handful of partners across North America, developed Qumana, a piece of software geared to help bloggers blog more efficiently.
Meeting with the company’s other partners via the Internet has not only allowed Qumana assemble a workforce from across North America, but allowed Hussey to work in an ideal environment, his home.

“Working out of my home lets me be flexible and spread things out throughout the day,” he said. “The commute to the office is also a lot shorter when you only have to walk across the room.”
After signing a major partnership last month with Lycos U.S., one of Google’s main rivals, Hussey said Qumana’s next goal rests on helping bloggers make a little money.
The online advertising industry is growing between 20 and 30 per cent a year and connecting bloggers with advertisers is already a lucrative business.

“While the vast majority of bloggers won’t get rich, advertising revenue may help them pay for their Internet connection or feed their latté addiction while doing something they enjoy,” Hussey said.

Tags: Tris Hussey, Gulf Islands Driftwood, Salt Spring Island, telecommuting, Qumana, blogging

David Sifry's State of the Blogosphere has another installment.  While the last one focused on the growth of the blogosphere (that it is still growing, but begs the question, but for how much longer), this one looks at two very important facets of the "modern" blogosphere -- languages used and the growth of tagging.

Let's look at language first.  While English might be the de facto language of commerce, and even the Internet, it is becoming less important as the language of the blogosphere.  English is steadily declining as the majority language of the blogosphere and Japanese and Chinese are growing quickly.  While Sifry admits that many languages, like Korean, might be under represented, it is clear that the nature of the online world is changing.  With that change all of us, from software developers to advertisers to ad networks, need to face facts ... we're going to need to support Asian languages better and cater to that huge (and growing) audience.

Now let's look at tagging.  Technorati pioneered tagging as a way for people to go beyond gross categories (say blogging or blog editors) to smaller, more granular descriptors (like Qumana).  To say that tagging has taken off is like saying Canadians like hockey.  The adoption of tagging has been nothing short of stellar.  The chart below shows that almost half of all blog posts are tagged and the rate of increase is just growing.  Unlike the growth of blogs, the growth of tagging can continue longer because as new bloggers join they have to "catch up" and start tagging.  Tagging isn't perfect.  Since it is a user-driven system different tags can be used for the same concepts, but the tags are necessarily linked.  Take blog editors and offline blog editors.  To me both of these tags mean the same thing, and Qumana is one of those tools, but are they linked?  If you search for blog editors will you find the same content as offline blog editors?  Probably not, unless the post is tagged with both of them.

So this is a clear flaw, but one that those of us who are thinking and writing about tags recognize.  I think it's only a matter of time before someone develops a way, probably based on search engine algorithms, to start linking tags together into larger groups ... even across languages.

In addition to the lack of connection among synonymous tags, there is the looming threat of tag-spam.  David doesn't think this is going to be a major problem:

Of course, one of the remaining open questions is whether or not that will lead to massive gaming of the system, but current trends seem to present evidence that large-scale gaming is not occurring. In fact, my belief is that because tags are built as hyperlinks inside the document, and thus visible to the reader, that a strong social pressure to use appropriate tags (or at least to not use inappropriate tags) manifests itself, especially with bloggers who want to cultivate influence and readers.

I don't share his opinion that tag-spam will be prevented by a self-policing system, but since it is on Technorati's radar--and many of ours as well--I expect (and hope) that potential solutions can be
found before it becomes a problem.

Qumana is, of course, big on tags and tagging.  We put one-click, easy tagging into our editor early on (first we believe).  We chat with the folks working on tags and tagging whenever we can.  Tags, once the connectors are built between synonymous tags, can be used to build larger and larger groups of interest.  All fun stuff to come down the road.

Where does this leave us?  This is David's summary of his State of the Blogosphere installment:

• The blogosphere is multilingual, and deeply international
• English, while being the language of the majority of early bloggers, has fallen to less than a third of all blog posts in April 2006.
• Japanese and Chinese language blogging has grown significantly.
• Chinese language blogging, while continuing to grow on an absolute basis, has begun to decline as an overall percentage of the posts that Technorati tracks over the last 6 months
• Japanese, Chinese, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and German are the languages with the greatest number of posts tracked by Technorati.
• The Korean language is underrepresented in this analysis
• Language breakdown does not necessarily imply a particular country or regional breakdown.
• Technorati now tracks more than 100 Million author-created tags and categories on blog posts.
• The rel-tag microformat has been adopted by a number of the large tool makers, making it easy for people to tag their posts. About 47% of all blog posts have non-default tags or categories associated with them.

Hat tips: Bloggers Blog, WebProNews

Tags: Technorati, state of the blogosphere, tags, tagging, tag-spam, international blogosphere

Less than a week after the launch of the Lycos-Qumana partnership, Lycos has completed the upgrade process of their blogging packages so that Tripod and now Angelfire bloggers can use Qumana to post to their blogs.

So, welcome to the fold Angelfire bloggers!  A little bird told me, okay it was Jen, that your blogs have been upgraded to be able to use Qumana.  Like 30 mins ago!

We just had an update meeting on this project and we're all just overwhelmed at the positive response we've received.  We're all enjoying working together and working on getting the two teams together for some fun.  I dunno which is better, whale watching in Victoria or a Red Sox game in Boston.   Hmmm, that's a tough one.

Regardless, I know that Lycos has some really cool stuff up their sleeves to be coming out and of course Qumana does too!

As the saying goes ... watch this space and this one too.

Come on, give Qumana a try.  Hey, it's even free.  Nothing to lose!

Tags: Qumana, Angelfire, Lycos, blogging

Hot on the heels of the announcement of our deal with Lycos, today Blogware/Tucows has announced our distribution agreement with their Blogware resellers.  This agreement allows Blogware resellers to promote Qumana, QReader, and QAds to their customers.

Since several of our blogs (this one, my personal blog, and our Investors blog) run on Blogware we knew that we wanted to build a solid, long-term relationship.  Blogware is one of the leading hosted blogging platforms (one that doesn't get nearly the respect and attention it deserves) and we are excited to be working with Tucows/Blogware and all the Blogware resellers world-wide.

What does this mean for Qumana?  Where are we heading?  It's exciting times for us.  We look forward to introducing more bloggers to Qumana, Qumana Ads and Qumana Reader.  We also hope that these kind of distribution deals will help more people start blogging.  The future?  Clearly we want to keep improving all our products and services.  Everything looked at for places to improve.  Easier, smoother blogging, better RSS reading, better ads for your posts.

I think this is just one of many busy weeks to come.

Tags: Tucows, Blogware, Qumana

Free Downloadable Application Lets Bloggers Publish Content to Multiple Blogs from Desktop;
Gives Users Control of Ads on Blogs

WALTHAM, Mass., April 5 -- Lycos, Inc. (http://www.lycos.com), a leading media destination for creators and consumers of quality content, today announced a new desktop blog editing tool, powered by Qumana, making blogging easier and more profitable for bloggers everywhere.

With the new Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor (http://lycos.qumana.com), Lycos enhances the freedom of blogging, allowing users to publish to their Tripod and Angelfire Blogs on Lycos, as well as to other major blogging sites, from the desktop. Additionally, the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor works with Qumana's Q Ads, an integrated ad program, allowing bloggers to insert ads into their blogs, while revenue from these ads is shared with the bloggers.

"If you're an active blogger, the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor now gives you the ability to post to multiple blogs with just one click, extend your blogs further reaching more people, and make more money from your blog content," said Alfred Tolle, CEO of Lycos, Inc. "With this new offering, Lycos continues to reinforce our strategy by offering content creators the tools needed to better showcase and market their independent content."

Key features of the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor include:

• Insert keyword-specific ads in one click and customize ads to your blog

• Edit old posts from any of your blogs

• Offline editing to work at your own pace

• One-click posting to one or more blogs

• Seamless publishing and cross-publishing

• Integration with all major blog platforms

• Easy image uploading

• Spell check and thesaurus

"Qumana is a versatile and powerful personal publishing application that makes creating the content for an online conversation almost as easy as thinking and talking," said Fred Fabro, president of Qumana. "Qumana is being put to use by an increasing number of bloggers around the world, and now this alliance with Lycos puts a free tool in the hands of its millions of Lycos users, helping them blog easily and instantly from their desktop to Tripod and Angelfire platforms."

The new Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor complements Lycos' award-winning BlogBuilder tool first launched in Feb. 2003. With Lycos BlogBuilder, users can create a blog in minutes, with customizable designs, privacy features, mobile posting and the ability to easily add digital photos, video and sound clips.

About Lycos, Inc.
Lycos, Inc. (http://www.lycos.com) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Daum Communications Corp., a leading Internet portal and e-commerce destination in Korea with a growing presence throughout the Asian markets. Lycos, Inc. creates and operates search, community and technology lifestyle sites including Lycos.com, Hotbot.com, Wired.com, Tripod.com and Angelfire.com. Other Lycos products and sites include Lycos Mail, Lycos Games, Lycos Planet, Lycos Phone and GetRelevant. Lycos was acquired by Korean Daum Communications Corp. in October 2004 and has its U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. Daum Communications Corp. is traded on the KOSDAQ: 035720, http://www.daum.net.

About Qumana
Qumana Software, Inc. (http://www.qumana.com) is a leading developer of tools and services for bloggers. Qumana's industry recognized tools include: Qumana, a blog editor for online publishing; Q Reader, an RSS Reader; and Q Ads, an advertising network for bloggers integrated into the Qumana tool. Qumana Software develops tools for every blogger: PC & Mac, experienced & novice, and multi-lingual. Qumana Software is headquartered in Vancouver, BC.

Lycos(R) is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc. All other product or service marks mentioned herein are those of Daum Communications Corp., Lycos, Inc. or their respective owners. All rights reserved.

Contacts:
Kathy O'Reilly
Lycos, Inc.
781.370.3454
Kathy.O'Reilly@lycos-inc.com

Darren Barefoot
Capulet Communications
604.727.5345
darren@capulet.com

Tags: qumana, lycos, lycos-qumana, blogging, web 2.0, deals

Wow, what a month it has been.  Our exciting news (on Lycos and Yahoo) is making its way through the Net as I write this (Thanks Toby, Lorraine, Mark, and Jeremy for early ink).  Before I get into the details and my thoughts, I have some thank yous to say.  First the whole Qumana and Lycos teams.  A project and deal of this scale cannot be pulled off by a single person.  The whole team has worked so, so hard to make this possible (and we even had a Qumana wedding too!) and I thank them so much.  Now, as good as a project might be a web-related project needs, well, servers.  So I'd like to give special thanks to our primary host Pair and our caching provider Akamai.  They have also done extra duty and came through in the clutch when we needed them to make sure the pages got served.

So ... what does this mean for Qumana?  A lot.  This is huge for us.  Lycos is one of those icons of the Internet.  Lots of history, lots going on.  We're excited to be working with them.  In many ways this is an affirmation of Qumana's mission: make blogging easier and better.  Beyond all the hype, beyond all the thoughts of blog bubbles and getting into debates about "what is web 2.0", this sea change we've seen over the last two years is about writing and publishing.  It's about people having their say.  It's about people helping to shape, expand, illustrate, and elaborate on the news of the day.  And now the legions of Tripod and Anglefire, and ... oh did I mention ... Wired bloggers can create, describe, and publish easier today than they could yesterday.

This has been a busy time, but there is no time to rest on our laurels.  Still lots to do.  Still more ways to make things better.  Still more posts to write.  Time to get going on this exciting new phase.

Tags: Qumana, Lycos, Qumana-Lycos, Lycos-Qumana, blogging

BlogBurst popped up this weekend as a hot (or not) discussion topic.  The main question is WIIFM (what's in it for me).  Right now, it's a traffic and link boost, and hints at a revenue share later.  Is that enough?  Is this the savior of the MSM? I think it has a lot of potential ... but I'm also withholding final judgment until I know more about the revenue share.

Tags: Pluck, BlogBurst

In the past 24 hours relevancy, the A-list, the Z-list, and blog "authority" are the hot news items.  Right now there are two polar opposite approaches to this situation.  Let's take the "traditional" approach first ... links.

Tech.memorandum is one of my favourite places to track who is talking about the hot issues of the day -- and even find them.  But there is some (growing?) criticism that Memorandum is too insular, too tied to the "A-list" (don't know if I'm on the A-list, but I do show up there pretty often, still waiting for making the top spot though).

Now there is an upstart in Megite.  Similar idea, but Matthew seems to be getting a few more interesting sites.  He's also offering custom/personalized pages based on an OPML file you send him (on it's way to you Matthew).  Megite is getting more of my attention lately.  Still small number of readers according to FeedBurner ... but this could be a diamond in the rough ... a site just waiting to make it big. (Yes, I show up here a lot too).

Regardless, both these sites work on a similar principle.  Find a topic, then track all the people linking to that article and related articles.  Of course it is impossible to track all of the blogs talking about a topic, so the question will be who do they drawn from.

Technorati is working on a similar idea with its "authority slider" ... authority as measured by the number of other blogs that link to that blog.  So Scoble is highest authority, my blog is a step down (I'm in the "magic middle").

This would be better than Tech.Memorandum or Megite because a niche site with lots of links on a topic might be able to garner significant traffic on that topic.  I've only played a little with this tool so I can't give much of a review of it right now.  The risk, of course, is that if you always keep the slider all the way to the right (a lot of authority) you will almost certainly miss cool stuff. (See also Techcrunch)

Now if we take this concept of authority and relevance and turn it on its ear, take the new site BlogCode.  Mark, Scoble, and I have written about BlogCode ... Mathew should since he's on our lists ... and I see this as a new way to connect blogs and find blogs.  You don't search with terms, you start with the blog.  Then you see what blogs are most like it.  Starting off, the rates are pretty much self-driven (you code yourself first), but as other people code your blog (essentially saying what they think your blog is about based on many different factors), the matches start moving and changing.  I've watched my matches shift even in the last 12 hours.  Of the folks above ... Scoble, Mathew, and I are all on each others' lists and I'm on Mark's but he's not on mine (I expect that to change).   This is different because it isn't about linky-love.  It's about content.  It's about finding new blogs like yours (like Scoble, I've found a few new ones).  I think this has a serious amount of potential in the future as most blogs are added to the list.

So, several different ways to track new content and find new blogs.  One group based on who links to whom, another based on what you and others think you write about.  Both important, both interesting, both exciting.

Tags: BlogCode, Technorati, authority, Megite, Tech.memorandum

Technorati's David Sifry's regular State of the Blogosphere update was released today.  As expected the Blogosphere continues to grow at an astounding 5.5 month doubling rate.

Here are the highlights from David's post:

• Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives
• Sophisticated spam management tools eliminate the spings and find that about 9% of new blogs are spam or machine generated
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
• Over 81 Million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day
• Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers

Several important points to note ...

• while there are certainly a growing number of spam blogs (9%) Technorati and other key parties are working on stemming the tide.
• Blog abandonment seems to be lessening.  13.7 million blogs are still active three months down the line
• Tagging of posts in increasing at that same rate as blogs.

Implications of these points are that blogs are increasingly becoming one of the largest content sectors on the Internet and tags will allow searchers for find niche blogs, topics, and posts more quickly.So, have blogs and blogging passed the hype test?  The technologies the power blogs certainly have.  RSS, easy web-based posting of content, and aggregation of microcontent all have solid adoption in many mainstream online publications.  In the next six months I expect to see more blogs focused on niche areas as e-mail becomes less viable for newsletters

Tags: blogs, blogging, tags, blog growth, Technorati, David Sifry

Powered by Qumana

Technorati is celebrating its first Tagiversary:

It was one year ago that we introduced Tags to Technorati, and what a year it's been! We're now tracking 4.6 million tags on over 75 million posts. Over half of all new posts are now tagged (using categories or rel links), which means they're easier to find and enjoy.

Tags have become an integral part of how blogging occurs. Of how people find information and how they disseminate it. The tag space is ever evolving, and yet has come far in a single year span for Technorati. It's amazing to think of tags as being a relatively 'new' concept.

Of course, what is a celebration of tags without improvements? Well, Technorati made a few nice upgrades. The tags homepage has a "hot tags" section:

Also new: language filtering, tag trend charts, and toggle features to customize your page.

The improvements show a number of things. The increased ability to follow topics by tags alone, and the ability to guage tag/search popularity. We can search Qumana and see the trends on our tag, which is an important metric that we can now use.

Happy Tagiversary to Technorati, and all the best for a productive new year in this very interesting space!

Tags: tagiversary, technorati, tags, tagging, tag space

Powered by Qumana

The BlogBusinessSummit blog has this great headline today:

BrandWeek Says Blogs are a Bad Marketing Idea. We Say BrandWeek is a Bad Marketing Idea

Ouch.  Harsh?  Actually no.  Read the whole report here (PDF).  The short paragraph is more than condescending and dismissive, it just plain misses the point.  Blogs aren't as much as a "marketing tool" as an information tool.  Blogs are important for marketers because the information can travel so fast.  Bad product reviews and good ones can take off like lightening.  So we're not saying all products need a blog or that all marketers need to blog, we're saying you can use blogs to your advantage, even passively, but you have to be aware and tuned in ... or else.
Just like they said on BBS:

The blogosphere is mistaken if they think businesses owe them something. But on the other side of the coin, businesses - particularly those that rely heavily on buzz marketing and word of mouth - ignore the blogosphere at their extreme peril. BrandWeek may not remain relevant to the conversation if it doesn’t figure that out.

Also seen on BloggersBlog

Tags: blogs, blog marketing, buzz marketing, word of mouth marketing

Powered by Qumana

Recent research on RSS conducted by Yahoo! and Ipsos reveals that awareness of RSS is still low among overall Internet users. 31% of Internet users use RSS, but most (27%) do not realize they are using RSS. Most, in fact, read RSS via start pages not wholly dedicated to RSS reading such as My Yahoo! or My MSN.

This states that while the technology is proving useful to web users, it remains a grey area and therefore it is not being used to its full potential. It also means that when awareness and consumer acceptance fully take hold, the perceived usefulness of the technology will spur on a big industry growth spurt.

Blog Herald has it right. It's not that people don't like RSS, or that it's too techie, it's about marketing. If people don't know what RSS is, have no awareness or exposure, then they cannot be expected to use it. Using it is simple - as simply as checking email or reading a website. Using it is useful - no more checking multiple websites. But marketing has not even touched RSS in its most basic form, let alone to tout its usefulness.

When will RSS be truly useful? We're still in the midst of growing this "online culture" that has been emerging for some years. A culture where people read news, interact, and communicate online. RSS becomes a useful tool for this culture of Internet users, and more and more this is becoming part of everyday life or a vast part of the population.

RSS will also truly gain awareness when it is consistently covered in mainstream media. We're just beginning to see mainstream press cover blogs... What you don't see is how people really use blogs: how they gather news via RSS, how they interact with people around the world, and how blogs become the medium for communication. We have to remember the same learning curve was experienced with the web, with email, and this is only an evolution of that change.

Read the full PDF on RSS here

Via Blog Herald

Tags: rss, blogs, blogging, awareness+of+rss