07|03|2007 4:33 pm EDT
An Intro to RSS For Domainers
I was chatting last night with a good domainer buddy of mine and I was telling him about the site and how he should read a few of the newer articles. He said he was pretty busy and it was hard to keep up with all the news on all the sites. I told him to keep up on the updates and to save himself some time, he should just sign up with a RSS Reader like reader.google.com and subscribe to our feed. I could tell I lost him. He asked me how it was updated and whether it came via email, etc. This isn’t the first time I’ve seemed to lose a domainer when I’m talking about the site, the feed or even commenting on the site.
Joe Davison over at TechAnalyst also noted this lack of tech-savvy in the domainer crowd at DomainFest.
When Michael Arrington keynoted at DomainFest LA in January of this year, I witnessed firsthand that OVER HALF of the surveyed audience was unfamiliar with RSS — a basic web syndication standard. This is an embarrassment.
I dont think it’s an embarrasment so much as just the reality of domainers. Domainers come from all walks of life and the tech sector isn’t normally one of them. I came from a design and marketing background for example, but it is pretty standard technology now. However, what is more embarrassing honestly ? : that most of the tech guys missed the boat on domains or that domainers missed the boat on RSS . . . anyway, I’ll save that for another time.
Ok, so what does this do with domains? Well we both of us found this funny : as I chatted with him and tried to explain RSS he was quickly able to find a great resource through just typing in a domain that made sense. WhatIsRSS.com So, I thought I’d throw this out there for all you readers who might be a little clueless (or intimidated or busy or whatever reason you don’t know this already) on how the newer formats of internet publishing works. I suggest you read this site for a brief primer (or maybe check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format) Now after you are done reading that site and you’ve signed up for a RSS reader account come back to our site and click the orange subscribe button up at the top. Now wasn’t that easy.
All aboard the clue-train. Choo! Choo!
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7 Comments
Michele Neylon
July 3, 2007 @ 7:43 pm EDT
Adam
I think too many people get caught up and confused with the terminology.
Instead of talking about RSS, which is just a buzzword really, if you can show someone why they’d want to use a feed reader and point them at a set of feeds, you might have more success
Just my thoughts
Michele
Frank Michlick
July 3, 2007 @ 7:56 pm EDT
Michele,
I think it’s probably a mixture of things.
In a way you and I are geeks. A lot of domainers came across domains by accident and did really well with investing in them. I still blame my moderate success in domaining on my geekyness - since the average user on the Internet is not a geek. But I am getting better at it
/FrankM
Joe Davison
July 4, 2007 @ 1:04 pm EDT
Hi Adam,
Perhaps the use of the word “embarassment” was a bit strong — the intent of my wording to convey my shock — I simply hadn’t expected it.
Ultimately, I think both sides are accountable for the state of affairs. At this point, we need to be doing everything we can to bring together the tech community and the domainer community — they are two communities that desperately need each other and can benefit massively by being on the same page.
Joe Davison
TechAnalyst.com
Michele Neylon
July 4, 2007 @ 7:33 pm EDT
Frank
I’m not a geek - or so my technical staff keep telling me
Michele
Bob DeCecco
July 4, 2007 @ 10:23 pm EDT
I use Pageflakes (some may be familiar with Netvibes) for my RSS feeds to stay on top of the latest and greatest, but now I need a feed for my RSS feeds
LOL
Adam Strong
July 5, 2007 @ 12:11 am EDT
Joe. We’re on the same page.
Matt Robson
September 28, 2007 @ 9:57 am EDT
Although I believe that Domain management could benefit from technology know-how, I don’t really expect the tech community to be a catalyst in this niche market.
I think the stakeholders such as advertising agencies, who really have most of the decision-making in the media world, need to act as catalysts by adopting ways of being directly integrated with large domain owners.
Once transacting in an open market becomes a commodity, rather than a closed network…transaction costs will be below 10%. This will provide additional revenue for publishers, and better cross-site transparent user behavior tracking which will be better for advertisers to manage granular bids.
Right now, as Google and Yahoo bundle their blind domain channel with their search and content networks, and its not possible to have different bidding strategies for the domain channel, no less differentiated bidding strategies within the channel.
Right now, large clients, and most agencies are JUST BEGINNING to explore their relationships with parking compaines like oversee.net / domainsponsor and sendori.
This is an important time for the domain AND tech community to court agencies and sell their media or their ad-optimization strategies to the buyers.