RSS feeds can boost business

Software can help a company's marketing efforts

Jeff Smith, Rocky Mountain News

Monday, September 24, 2007

Businesses can increase their visibility and Web site traffic through RSS feeds.

Boulder-based Room 214 and Denver-based NewsGator Technologies work with companies to boost their brand. NewsGator has done some work for the Denver Newspaper Agency, which handles business matters for The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News under a joint operating agreement.

For example, Room 214's software can help a company measure how many people subscribe to a particular Web page, how frequently content is downloaded, and where a subscriber is from. The information can help a company be more effective in its marketing.

Co-founder Jason Cormier said he and partner James Clark (Room 214 stands for their dorm room when they attended Colorado State University) often run into business prospects who vaguely realize the importance of RSS but grumble that "tech speak makes them sick."

So Cormier and Clark refer to Google, which started in the mid-1990s indexing Web pages and now indexes Web news, blogs, audio and video.

"It's not a challenge to explain to a company the value of being on page one of Google (search engine)," Cormier said.

Businesses increasingly are using RSS to attract new customers. A company can set up RSS feeds for news and product announcements, and job vacancies. A real estate brokerage firm could distribute real estate listings. Newspapers increasingly allow users to share their content.

While some companies may be concerned about giving away content, they remain in control of what information is distributed, such as whether it's a full article or a summary. And readers are likely to be happier because they're able to see the content in a more convenient format.

The pros . . . and cons of using RSS feeds

• You can customize your Internet - subscribing only to the Web pages, blogs, topics and other content you want to read.

• Because the content is fed into an anonymous bucket, you don't get the spam associated with e-mails.

• It's easy to subscribe to too much information - and get overwhelmed. This reporter found it takes some work to groom a news reader, and you still could get a lot of junk you don't want.

• There's also a debate over whether people using the Internet will look only at content that reinforces their view of the world.

Latest trends

Jason Cormier, managing partner of Room 214, said consumers increasingly will be able to receive more specifically tailored Web site content and at the time they want to see it.

"It's all about getting information on your terms and filtering out all the garbage," he said.

In a related hot development, companies such as newspapers increasingly are offering "widgets" or "gadgets" that enable users to take specific pieces of Web content and share it with friends or put it on customized Web pages like their personal Facebook or My- Space social-networking pages

In essence, the widget serves as a portable reader that can be taken off one Web site and moved to another one.

A widget might include information about an upcoming concert, The New York Times crossword puzzle or a pregame video interview with an NFL head coach.

NewsGator worked with USAToday to develop "travel widgets" that include travel news and deals. A Washington Post political-blog widget called "The Fix" recently included a video interview with former Colorado Rep. Bob Schaffer, who is running for U.S. Senate.