Will spam kill off RSS?
I’m a bit late spotting this, but I noticed today that Moreover’s RSS feeds contain a lot of ads. 2RSS.com noticed the same thing about a month ago. In fact there’s already been quite a discussion about the phenomenon, since not only Moreover does it. Indeed, there’s some talk that Blogger is actually inserting ads into the news feeds of its users.
What’s worrying is that all this is going on without much thought towards — or the consent of — the end-user. Moreover’s feeds, for example, not only include no AD: prefix that may help the user get a sense of what is actually part of the feed and what is RSSpam, but they also configure the spam so that every time you update your feed — or your RSS reader does it for you — the same piece of spam will pop up. This means, as this example from the Jason Murphy Show illustrates, large quantities of spam per valid item.
All this shows a lack of thought and consideration for what is still a very new medium. If you want to kill off RSS, Moreover has the answer. Of course, there’s also the need for these guys to make money. But this is not the way to do it. Ads are better served within the content, so that, for example, if you click on the item itself so that the full content loads, the ad itself will appear along with the content.
Another point: Folk argue whether ads included in RSS feeds are spam or not. I say anything that’s sent to you without you agreeing to it is spam. (I don’t recall agreeing to it when I included the Moreover RSS feed in my reader, although I’m willing to stand corrected. The only time I’ve had to click on something to acknowledge the existence of a user agreement was with the Telegraph feeds.) Folks need to be consulted before they sign up for a feed that it includes spam.
The bottom line here is that this grapeshot approach to ads in RSS feeds endangers the medium before it’s taken off. Apple are including RSS in a very interesting and imaginative way in their new OS but there aren’t going to be many takers if feeds are polluted by too many ads that aren’t even contextual (I noticed ads for free golf clubs and microdermabrasion, whatever that is, in my Moreover feed on East Timor news). Keep pulling that stunt, Moreover, and you’ll lose everyone’s interest very quickly. RSS was supposed to be the answer to mailboxes full of rubbish, not an alternative means of delivering that rubbish.