RE: [syndication] Advertising/subscription feeds?

[dave.cantrell@gunter.af.mil]

>What does this bode of syndicated feeds?  How long before the
>schlockmeisters start tacking advertising into feeds?

Hmm. I seem to recall asking this same question a few months ago [1], only
to be publicly and rather snottily spanked by a kid who made an assumption
without bothering to answer the question [2]. So the whole thread went
nowhere, unfortunately. :(

Mike Krus had a constructive answer that was in line with what I felt should
happen. [3]

Although I did not envision the aggregator inserting the ad, but rather the
actual content provider itself.

This really is kind of a pandora's box and I don't see an end once it
starts. They insert ads as the first item, clients strip out the first item.
Then the providers insert an ad (or more!) randomly in the feed.

As a feed passes through each aggregator or other service, do they insert an
ad? This "corrupts" the original feed (see my original post) and goes
against the spirit of RSS. But reality often twists the ideal to accomplish
it's goals -- we all know how HTML turned out.

The other alternative is charging for feed access, which sounds fine except
it can potentially choke out a burgeoning technology before it even gets
started. Kind of the chicken-and-egg problem: Why build a service that
generates no revenue, and why advertise on a service that has no viewers?

Anyways, just wondering what other people's thoughts are on this as well.

Thanks,
-dave

[1] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndication/message/1889
[2] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndication/message/1891
[3] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndication/message/1899