The RSS King is Dead. Long Live the RSS King
Scobe knocks some well placed Web 2.0 Conference nails in the Newsgator/NetNewsWire acquisition : During the week I had been thinking that NewsGator was the most obvious MS COD acquisition target he was referring to care of Bill + Ted. ("Everything is different, but the same... things are more moderner than before... bigger, and yet smaller... it's computers... San Dimas High School football rules.") At the time, he linked to comments that highlighted Feedburner top off the list, which ties into long lauded Feld Mobius RSS Trifecta Rollup Play.
I especially like The Scobe's comments encouraging services to be built on top of the cross platform synchronized rocket ship the Denver boys have built. I know first hand that RSS search algorithms drawn from the meta-user statistics in a RSS Reader can take out the majority of noise/spam experienced by typical Web Link based recency search. The sharing of user data between the applications (what people search for mixed with feeds they save, items they click, share etc) allows the broken part of the RSS Reader experience (hundreds of recency based feeds and items display in 2 or 3 panes) to be deconstructed and rebuilt using different navigational metaphors, such as "Your Favourite", "Most Popular", "Recommended", "Related", "Tags + Feeds You'll Like" and different versions of "If you like this, you'll like that etc" - "people who read that, loved this".. similar to what attensa and searchfox are doing but closer to the conversation of Tech-Memeorandum, the discovery + speed of google blog search and the sharing that goes with Flickr. I'm also with Richard McManus here - given your free, ubiquitous web based product is your flagship, make it sing (just not like a morning coffee notes duet with patrick scoble though :) and use some Net-vibing Start.com'd Ajax. (ooh he said ajax, what a buzzword bingo aussie) With all of this underpinned by Newsgator's Cross Platform Rocketship ! Heck Google may have NASA but they have one damn awful Personalised Home Page, even if their latest Deskptop RSS clips are better; Rubbish compared to what is being built in Colorado, organically and through patient, crafted precise acquisitions. (I wonder what they will buy for Syndicate in December and Gnomedex in April)
In closing ladies and gentlemen (cue podcast link), When Fred Wilson says RSS is dead, he's right. In a limited way, hehe :) The cream doesn't rise to the top yet. All content is created equal in RSS Readers at the moment, and that just aint right. As Mr HDTV Sportsman Cuban calls it : "Suggestive Programming" - TIVO for the Internet or "Automated Web Surfing" if you prefer a Winerism (great definition btw) : I cant wait till Newsgator as MR Scoble mentions starts building smarts on top. Newsgator has always been different from the 2000 other RSS readers due to its enterprise focus : This was the (stated) basis of the Mobius investment, linked to Brad Feld's interest in businesses that get paid by other businesses. However their early home runs were in the consumer space and now with NetNewsWire, Feeddemon etc (4 of the top RSS readers) there is no doubt Newsgator is out to dominate the Consumer RSS Space, by default anyway. Isn't it great that there may be the opportunity that GEMAYA (GOOG, EBAY, MSN, AOL, YAHOO, AOL) don't necessarily own the space, yet ! And if Newsgator keeps up the major acquisition every quarter or two and implement some of the features The Scobemeister talks about such as RSS Search, they will be THE RSS EMPIRE + KING. Lock, Stock and 2 Barrels ! Heck, wonder if Technorati may come to the party !! (interesting valuation implications of independent value of the Mobius entities vs rollup value, as well as time based valuation evolutions...) As Scoble said, the acquisition he was interested in would cost less than Skype, but more than Flickr. If they were for sale.
I especially like The Scobe's comments encouraging services to be built on top of the cross platform synchronized rocket ship the Denver boys have built. I know first hand that RSS search algorithms drawn from the meta-user statistics in a RSS Reader can take out the majority of noise/spam experienced by typical Web Link based recency search. The sharing of user data between the applications (what people search for mixed with feeds they save, items they click, share etc) allows the broken part of the RSS Reader experience (hundreds of recency based feeds and items display in 2 or 3 panes) to be deconstructed and rebuilt using different navigational metaphors, such as "Your Favourite", "Most Popular", "Recommended", "Related", "Tags + Feeds You'll Like" and different versions of "If you like this, you'll like that etc" - "people who read that, loved this".. similar to what attensa and searchfox are doing but closer to the conversation of Tech-Memeorandum, the discovery + speed of google blog search and the sharing that goes with Flickr. I'm also with Richard McManus here - given your free, ubiquitous web based product is your flagship, make it sing (just not like a morning coffee notes duet with patrick scoble though :) and use some Net-vibing Start.com'd Ajax. (ooh he said ajax, what a buzzword bingo aussie) With all of this underpinned by Newsgator's Cross Platform Rocketship ! Heck Google may have NASA but they have one damn awful Personalised Home Page, even if their latest Deskptop RSS clips are better; Rubbish compared to what is being built in Colorado, organically and through patient, crafted precise acquisitions. (I wonder what they will buy for Syndicate in December and Gnomedex in April)
In closing ladies and gentlemen (cue podcast link), When Fred Wilson says RSS is dead, he's right. In a limited way, hehe :) The cream doesn't rise to the top yet. All content is created equal in RSS Readers at the moment, and that just aint right. As Mr HDTV Sportsman Cuban calls it : "Suggestive Programming" - TIVO for the Internet or "Automated Web Surfing" if you prefer a Winerism (great definition btw) : I cant wait till Newsgator as MR Scoble mentions starts building smarts on top. Newsgator has always been different from the 2000 other RSS readers due to its enterprise focus : This was the (stated) basis of the Mobius investment, linked to Brad Feld's interest in businesses that get paid by other businesses. However their early home runs were in the consumer space and now with NetNewsWire, Feeddemon etc (4 of the top RSS readers) there is no doubt Newsgator is out to dominate the Consumer RSS Space, by default anyway. Isn't it great that there may be the opportunity that GEMAYA (GOOG, EBAY, MSN, AOL, YAHOO, AOL) don't necessarily own the space, yet ! And if Newsgator keeps up the major acquisition every quarter or two and implement some of the features The Scobemeister talks about such as RSS Search, they will be THE RSS EMPIRE + KING. Lock, Stock and 2 Barrels ! Heck, wonder if Technorati may come to the party !! (interesting valuation implications of independent value of the Mobius entities vs rollup value, as well as time based valuation evolutions...) As Scoble said, the acquisition he was interested in would cost less than Skype, but more than Flickr. If they were for sale.
"Greg Reinacker just built an RSS Empire. Now it'll be interesting to see what they do with it. One thing? They need a more simplistic Web experience. They have a TON of value in the feeds that are in their system. What's the secret thing they are hiding from the world? Great blog search. Great services that could be built on top of their model."
"Cell. Phone : Beep.. Beep
Maryam grabs the cell. phone and throws it against the wall, screaming: Shut UP!
Robert: Nooooooooooooo.."
Maryam grabs the cell. phone and throws it against the wall, screaming: Shut UP!
Robert: Nooooooooooooo.."
posted by redbarren at 12:30 PM
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