Tag Archives: RSS Authentication

You Can’t Segment RSS… Sorry

By Andy Beard | Published: September 9, 2009

Well actually you can as you could with the now defunct Feedmagic service that I evangelised 3 years ago as something that would be killed off by Google and the growing popularity of RSS sharing with Google Reader.

Google Reader still:-

  • Doesn’t support simple HTTP authentication so you can use RSS for private stuff
  • Doesn’t provide a mechanism so content producers can restrict sharing stuff

This is important… if you want to provide premium content from a membership site in a form that is most accessible for your subscribers.

It is even important for anyone using stock photos with a contract/license limited to a certain number of views for which you are personally liable. If you allow people to share blog posts that contain stock photos, it is a significant financial risk… but I am not a lawyer.

But segmentation? Not unless every subscriber had a unique feed… Feed Magic had it

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Open Letter To Google Reader Team On The Future Of RSS

By Andy Beard | Published: May 1, 2008

RSS Awareness DayToday is RSS Awareness Day, and as a solid 40% of my RSS subscribers use Google Reader, I thought I would take this opportunity to reach out to the Google Reader team.

I am someone who loves using RSS, but at the same time as a business owner I find RSS is not living up to its current billing.

Whilst I haven’t mentioned RSS day before on this blog, I have known about Daniel’s plans for a month, and I might have been the first one to suggest using a dedicated site to promote RSS Day. This avoids what might be looked on as purely an attempt at linkbait.

Posted in blogging tips , Google , marketing , news | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

The Fallacy Of Subscriber Only Content On Blogs

By Andy Beard | Published: April 7, 2008

Lot of blogs, either using plugins or a little custom PHP code publish articles that are intended purely for their subscribers, with the content appearing only in their RSS feeds, or in emails generated from the RSS Feed.

Totally Illogical

Lets look at this from a number of points of logic

  • Best "public" content – if you are reserving your best content for subscribers, then you might be limiting the number of subscribers you receive. I look on this as a little different to "premium content" that might be served within a membership site or private RSS feed / email list – there
Posted in blogging tips , SEO Blog | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

The Easy Way To Syndicate Other Peoples Content, but…

By Andy Beard | Published: November 20, 2006

Sharing RSS most seem to argue is totally legal in all circumstances, that providing RSS feeds you are giving permission to share the content, and that any control over RSS syndication is bad for RSS.

Can you afford to defend yourself against a DMCA claim? Some services might be able to claim “safe harbour”. I am not sure that would apply for individuals.

Are you one of the people who is scared to give someone their email address?

A long discussion on exactly why some control of RSS syndication would actually benefit the long-term future of RSS Syndication.

Posted in Google , web 2.0 | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

Share Your Montastic Stats or Not?

By Andy Beard | Published: November 8, 2006

Christian Montoya pointed me in the direction of Montastic today.

It looks like a great service, especially because it is free, and I have lots of domains to monitor that I might not visit personally very often.

Read more on Share Your Montastic Stats or Not?…

Posted in blogging tips , Google , wordpress | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments closed


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