Lack of RSS subscribers

There was a post this morning about the lack of up take of RSS. I am not surprise. They way most bloggers hide the feeds on their blogs. I have lost count the number of times I've had to hunt around the a blog to find the damm feed link. For some reason many bloggers think it is fun to hide their feed links from their readers. News flash: I hate having to hunt for feeds and I am sure many other readers fell the same way.

You want a reader to subscribe to you feed? You need to make it obvious. Not hidden in 6pt font between a long list of your archives and your blog role.

Feed links need to be at the top of the page, in big friendly red letters.

Tag: RSS

Wireless Email vs RSS+SSE

I agree with Bill Burham over the irrational exuberance within the wireless email market. Wireless email is to easy to turn into a commodity. It is far to easy for Microsoft or the Open Source community to modify email servers to natively support wireless email.

An even greater threat comes from RSS and SSE. Adding these to email servers will be even easier. A user an setup a RSS feed of their in box which can then be read by ANY RSS reader on any device. Add in SSE and you have the two way communication that gives you everything you could want from wireless email.

Simple and workable is a better bet that than complex and complete.

Tags: Wireless Email, RSS, SSE, RSS+SSE, Bill Burham, Disruption

Identity Networks and Reputation

Dick Hardt's presentations on Identity 2.0 have been bubbling away in the back of my mind for the last few weeks. If you haven't seen them (or if you don't know Dick) then you should one can be found here (Dick's presentations are very good from a communications point a view...a welcome change from the usually death by light pro and very useful for learning about good presentation). For those who don't have the time to watch the presentations (at this time - you really should) a quick summary: Identity 1.0 == secret handshakes; Identity 2.0 == photo id.

We all know a lot of secret handshakes; each site or service requires their own. The other problem besides the proliferation of secret handshakes is that they are easy to copy. Identity 2.0 helps address these short comings of the secret handshakes.

Dick Hardt asks who or what will cause the implementation of open, simple and scalable identity system. My bet is the reputation system. Identity makes reputation systems more robust and less open to fraud. Why? Well firstly it enables the effective use of a person's trust or social network in building a reputation rating. Secondly, it supports the use of review reputations as well. Both of which improve the reputation system overall.

Mobile Phone: The Social Networking device

The debate over whether consumer electronics devices will converge around the mobile phone or some other device is a long, drawn out and well beyond illumination by a short blog post. I had personally felt that the devices would not converge around the mobile phone. I expected that we would use more than one device and the mobile phone would not be the dominant device.

Now, I know the argument is a red herring.

And all because of one person and one interview.

Anina points out that the value of the mobile phone arises from being the social networking device. An iPod is not -- an iPod is an entertainment device.

In the mobile operators march to higher ARPU, the importance of social networking is lost. How important? The single biggest activity on the internet is social networking whether for business or pleasure. Every email, every IM, every blog is social networking.

The handset manufacturers and wireless operators will only achieve success by developing devices that support and reduce the friction of social networking. They won't achieve success by trying to cram as much content as possible into a phone.

Anina is an influencer and it is going to be fascinating to see where she goes.

Update: Anina is running a discussion of the interview on her blog. 13 Nov 2005