Colin's Corner

Kanoodle launches RSS ad service

Have you been noticing more and more ads and sponsored links creeping into your RSS feeds ?  Well, if companies such as Kanoodle are successful, expect to see a lot more of them. With the help of Moreover Technologies FeedDirect RSS ads, Kanoodle has introduced BrightAds RSS a self-service system that lets online publishers include advertising with their RSS feeds.

Publishers can choose if the ads (which will be in text format) will appear either as a separate post in the feed, or as part of an existing post. Publishers share  revenue generated with Kanoodle . Kanoodle is also working with blogging software company Six Apart to insert ads in the company's hosted blogging service, TypePad (used by this blog).  Other players like Overture, Pheedo, Industry Brains and RSS Ads are also exploring this opportunity.

Firms eye RSS as an ad vehicle
Kanoodle expands ads to smaller publishers
rss

What's the Orange Box ?

Techies often take for granted that their readers know what this orange box means. However a cursory review of many web sites with XML/RSS wedfeeds shows that many fail to adequately explain in plain English how webfeeds and RSS readers work. Many have no explanation at all. (A good overview on RSS is available at PCWorld's News on Demand).

The recently released Pew Internet & American Life report on The State of Blogging identified that only 5% of internet users use RSS but this number is likely to grow substantially over the next year. So, does your site explain what the orange box means ? Do you have an easy to understand up to date guide and FAQ on RSS ? Do you explain your policy on advertising and other embedded RSS links, privacy issues and so on ? Are you maximizing your syndication opportunities by placing the box in a prominent position or do you bury it at the bottom of the page ? Do you encourage and make it easy for other sites to syndicate your content and do you impose any copyright or licensing restrictions ? Check out your site's policies to ensure your readers have information clearly presented so they appreciate the benefits of RSS.

Videoblogging Resource

For those interested in understanding more about videoblogging check out the community knowledge based wiki from a Yahoo discussion group on videoblogs.

Linked from Robin Good

mSpace

mSpace is an interaction model to help explore relationships in information. The idea is to make it easier to parse the web for information. mSpace combines web browser functions, Apple directory browsing functions, google search functions and other functions in an intuitive interface that powers you through to the information you want, even if you don't know very much about the subject matter. mSpace helps people build knowledge from exploring those relationships. mSpace does this by offering several powerful tools for organizing an information space to suit a person's interest: slicing, sorting, swapping, infoViews and preview cues.

Try out the mSpace browser for classical music and consider other applications to which it can be applied. A technical report describing the theory behind their implementation is available.

SEO for CEOs

If SEO is bit of a mystery then make sure you check out this good primer on "Search engine optimization for CEOs".

The article concludes: It is highly unlikely that one person can create a website, select the proper keywords, prepare the copywriting and develop the statements that will convert visitors to buyers! It usually takes a team of people, and it is critical to follow the processes [outlined in the article] in order to secure high placement within search engine results. Your website must contain the right keyword phrases as they are the foundation of your online business model. These keyword phrases must be used in sentences that make sense and relate to the visitors as well as the search engine spiders that are reading, indexing and ranking your website. You have two “masters” to serve.

Relevant inbound links are extremely important. Quality and high-ranking sites pointing to your website will increase search engine ranking. Relevant sites linking to your web pages will result in a site [or page] that search engines feel deserves to be ranked high in the page results. You can never have too many quality inbound links. Finally, stay involved. Ask your team the hard questions. Make sure you don’t leave the creation and maintenance of web page content to chance.

If you are in NYC 28th February to March 3rd, check out the Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo 2005.

Odeo - making money from Podcasts

Odeo, a San Francisco start-up from Evan Williams, the cofounder of Pyra Labs (creator of Blogger), and Noah Glass (founder of Audioblogging) that formally debuted at the TED Conference (Technology, Education, Design) is looking to see if there is a business in Podcasting.

According to a NYTimes article, (free registration required) Odeo means to be podcast central - an all-in-one system that makes it possible for someone with no more equipment than a telephone to produce podcasts and also makes it possible for users to assemble custom playlists of audio files and copy them directly onto MP3 audio players.

The company plans to make money by selling audio content and advertising and, eventually, software for producing and editing podcasts.

More details can be found at Evan William’s Blog

If you are interested in video blogging rather than audioblogging check out vlogit from SeriousMagic that was presented recently at Demo@15

Apple's healthy margins on the iPod Shuffle

Analysts at IDC recently took apart an iPod Shuffle and come up with an estimate of how much the diminutive music player costs Apple to make. They found that Apple makes a healthy 35 percent to 40 percent profit on each player sold, and stands to make even more from iTunes music purchases and expected drops in flash memory pricing.

The iPod Shuffle's flash memory, which was supplied by South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. in the model examined by IDC, is estimated to be the most expensive component used in the player by far, said IdaRose Sylvester, a senior semiconductor research analyst at IDC. (IDC is owned by International Data Group)

Full story on PLAYLIST  Click to purchase the IDC report " Getting to the Core: An IDC Teardown Analysis of the Apple iPod Shuffle"

Blogs and images

Good overview article from the NYTimes Circuits Column on vlogs and moblogs (Free registration required)

Web Page Design

Analysis of the new Washington Post Homepage design by Eyetracker

The Eyetrack III research released by The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools looked at effective web page design by analyzing how individuals viewed a webpage. Combined with other site metrics  -- usability testing, focus groups, log analysis -- the Eyetrack III findings provides some direction for improving the design of news websites.

Paid Subscriptions

Network Subscriptions offers an interesting new way to access quality online content. They partner with leading publishers to create unified content bundles - a network of subscriptions for one low fee. Their Business Network includes full access to The Wall Street Journal Online, Economist.com, Harvard Management Update, getAbstract's weekly business book summaries, TechnologyReview.com and Encyclopædia Britannica Online. All in a single subscription of $23.95 per month! In fact their subscription for all six titles is less than the online only subscription to WSJ Online.

This is an interesting model which could offer both B2B and B2C sites a way to extract some revenues from readers. Even if a site has part of their content gated, subscribers may be willing to pay for that element as part of an overall bundle. Until now, most publishers have been unwilling to gated content given their heavy reliance on advertising. The bundled subscription model could offer publishers an opportunity to  experiment more with paid content models.