So, I spent about an hour watching Bachellorette and writing a response to Slava’s post about the addition of some content to the MacMinute RSS feed… But then something on my iBook hung (I suspect an old beta of NetNewsWire Pro which has since been updated), and I lost it all. Argh…
The basics of the past were a ‘thank you’ to Slava, then a ‘not good enough yet’ argument with a few links to other arguments about RSS feeds, followed by a few business ideas about how to monetize a complete RSS feed as well as some statistics from MarketingFix and inluminent/weblog about the readership habits of those readers.
But again, I lost the post, so I’ll guess that perhaps God didn’t want me posting it. So, you get this quick note, instead of a full fledged post… I’ve got work to do.
http://www.them.ws/feeds/index.php?feed=macminute
James… Two things wrong with that. You’re breaking MacMinute’s copyright… It doesn’t work in NetNews Wire.
Slava, Stan, Misha and company all like to eat, don’t steal their content.
I don’t believe pagescrapping is a crime. He is giving attribution. So why is this a problem?
Noel:
MacMinute pays a lot for their server… It’s used to serve up news, but more importantly it’s used to make money (by selling ads). They give an RSS feed that includes 1 sentence to get you to click through and see an ad.
If you have the whole post, why click through? Now on the other hand, if everyone that used that feed started donating $5 a month to MacMinute, I’m sure their feelings would change quickly.
Over at MacMerc we don’t make money… It’s a labor of love and a few affiliate programs that don’t do a whole lot of good but are still very tempting to use. In our estimates it’s cheaper to give full summaries over RSS (less bandwidth), but even then we run a text ad. The text ad is more of an experiment and we hope to soon start turning a profit on the RSS feed. We don’t offer extended text via RSS, but we still offer more than most Mac sites.
That screen scraped MacMinute feed is that same thing as if someone started up a rogue TV station that broadcasted NBC but without the ads… It seems logical NBC wouldn’t be supportive. Sure it gets the word out about NBC, but it’s threatening their business model. TV content producers don’t even like Tivo’s.
MacMinute is a lot cooler than NBC but I still try to support them (I want them to stay around). I have bought things through their ads and will do so in the future.
I used to run a screen scraper before I talked Stan into getting an RSS feed. Now I use their feed, even though it gives me less.
I understand, but i could just as well go to the site and not view the ads. Why not just get it in my news reader? Better yet why not put text adds at the bottom of each post in the feed?
Its just easier to get a full feed than a line of text, when all im going to do is click it read the sentence and close the window.
granted, you do have a point. I’m still going to use them’s feeds. why? because its quicker, and more convenient. yes, i do still visit the site, every once and a while, click an add, and bam.
good insight, none the less. i do love MacMerc. you guys rock.
It has nothing to do with giving attribution. It has to do with what MacMinute feels they can provide in their RSS feed and still be profitable. MacMinute cannot give away their content for free. MacMinute stays in business because people visit the Web site to read the news and view the ads… whether they like it or not. If everyone read every story in NetNewsWire, no one would ever view the ads. I am sure that MacMinute sells banner space in impressions (the number of times a banner gets shown) as do most Web sites. If MacMinute had less people visiting their Web site (because they were bypassing the ads in NetNewsWire), then they would be selling less ad space. MacMinute is providing a free service by maintaining an RSS feed… not to mention there are still a ton of sites that don’t even include the first sentence of the story in their RSS or a feed at all. James is distributing MacMinute’s content in a way that they do not want it to be distributed (for financials reasons more than likely). Simple as that.
I’m on pretty friendly terms with the Unsanity crew, Slava included, I motivated him to APE Dock Detox* and he knows of the existence of this feed and he didn’t ask me to remove it.
Furthermore I am not passing the content off as my own which doesn’t seem to be against the displayed copyright of MacMinute.
*may not be true but I like to think so.
You used “monetize” and “MacMinute” in the same sentence. You’re funny!
I’d be willing to purchase “500 articles via RSS”, for a fee per article; cheaper fees as the quantity improves. This’d require sending user:pass@domain authentication information with my RSS requests, and then the RSS generation tool would fill in the full content for as many articles as possible, given the credit left in my account.
This’d be *wonderful* in combination with Slashdot, for instance, as I already have a 2000-unit subscription (1300 of which I’ve still remaining). I’d be happy to burn through those a LOT faster if I could read full articles in NNW; right now, Slashdot’s actually dropping on my list because of this.
I can’t, however, afford $5 a month; I’ve got over two hundred feeds in my list, which makes it economically infeasible to purchase a time-based rate, in my case.
I’d be totally willing to prepay for a fixed number of 200 OK http requests to the full article feed; that’d certainly help me assign my costs more reasonably.
How many 200 OK (not 304 Unmodified!) RSS fetches does a dollar purchase?
Interesting discussion, especially when you consider how few media companies see RSS as an extension or new entry point into their sites.
CNN.com is my favorite example. I started running an RSS feed there in late 1999, but it broke in the wake of some equipment moves after Sept 11, 2001: I left there in early 2000 so it was unmaintained and pretty much unknown within the company.
There is at least one screenscraper who keeps up to date with this stuff. I have been unsuccessful at convincing anyone at my alma mater that they should own and nurture this as a new channel, like mobile phone access.
Ooops, shoulda checked the link: mobile.cnn.com doesn’t work, but cnn.com/mobile will tell you what’s offered. The old URL was what the wireless telcos used to get the feeds for their subscribers.