The first session at BlawgThink 2005 just wrapped. It was “Advanced RSS” with Rick Klau from FeedBurner. Overall, it was a pretty interesting session. Some of the topics we addressed were extending RSS, security issues/providing secure feeds, and touched on the dreaded “monetizing” blogs.
It wasn’t as “advanced” as I’d hoped, but given that I’ve written several books on XML, that wasn’t too surprising. I also disliked that Rick made editing RSS on your own seem “frightening”. XML is text. It has a few rules, but they are pretty easy, certainly not out of reach for most users–that aspect could have been handled better. It was an advanced session, after all. But Rick was very straight up, answered questions, and I did come away with a better outlook toward FeedBurner than I had going in. I think I’m going to give it a whirl.
Note to self for future sessions/open sessions: Seth Godin’s “Monetize This“.
Hi Dave – Thanks for the feedback. Re: editing XML by hand… think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I see the support requests that come into FeedBurner from some of our nearly 100k users, and if I had a nickel for every invalid RSS question… And almost all of those come from machine-generated feeds! The reality is that it’s a very liberal spec (which is good), but which means there are lots of opportunities for mistakes if you’re not careful. You and I both know what we’re looking at, but I think most users don’t.
Should publishers have to worry about hand-editing their feeds? I sure don’t think so, any more than I think hand-editing HTML makes much sense. Sure, you can: but do you want to? Is there any advantage to it? (And considering the mix of abilities in the room, I think it’s safe to say that most aren’t good candidates for hand editing your feed…)
As to the question of “advanced”, I struggled with that. Especially when you’re supposed to talk about an acronym with the word “simple” in the name. 🙂
Glad you’re giving FeedBurner a try, and keep in touch! I see you’re in Chicago, drop us a line some time.
–Rick
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Rick Klau
VP, Business Development
FeedBurner – http://www.feedburner.com
rickk@feedburner.com
AIM/Y!/Skype: RickKlau
office: 312.756.0022 x2012
direct: 312.239-0727
cell: 630.362.8911
Rick-
I actually think we’re in agreement re: editing RSS. I don’t think people *should* edit RSS by hand–there are good tools to do it, why reinvent the wheel?
However, I personally like to evangelize and de-mystify the technology. I take the approach of showing people just how simple XML (and RSS) can be, to take the “magic” out of it… and then show them how that simplicity is part of it’s power.
Then, of course, go on to why it’s easier to use tools to do it, etc. I think we end up in the same place in the end, I just like to help people get over technology fears. I do think FeedBurner helps with that, too!
Thanks again for a great presentation!