It's still true. An ugly, gearhead name hasn't prevented RSS from becoming the best promotional tool for publishers since Web pages.
More important, RSS gives the surviving content-creation old-timers another chance to grasp and start making money from distributed publication.
Indeed, those who do not continue to prefer a complaint-filled death to a profitable life will find ways to market RSS advertising and create profitable products that spin together RSS with other technologies. If only I could find evidence that most "mainstream" content publishers are actually reaching for that available, low-hanging fruit.
North Carolina, home to some of the best-read blogs, some of the world's pioneering interactive Web software and some of the finest pioneering technology on and about the Internet, is apparently no exception.
The Web Cluetrain left with few North Carolina publications even standing on the platform dancing from foot to foot when the first round of big opportnities was available. Most are apparently determined to miss the Cluetrain again with RSS, Southern Connections found in a site survey some weeks ago. And substantially reaffirmed recently.
Yes, there were North Carolina Cluetrain exceptions at the dawn of the Web. Among them the Raleigh News & Observer, the Greensboro News & Record and the Fayetteville Observer. There is important North Carolina newspaper online innovation now -- in the same places.
Most notable is Greensboro.
The
Fayetteville Observer has adopted RSS and appears to have at last learned to love blog-like action.
Similarly, and on a much bigger scale, the N&O.
No doubt someone else will find that some, or many, mainstream North Carolina newspapers have created innovative, RSS advertising products that stand toe to toe with Greensboro's news-focused innovation.
Profitable products can be inexpensive to build, after all. Getting up to speed on available products isn't difficult. The amount of money to be made is not, strictly speaking, a secret.
No doubt I didn't look hard enough.
Perhaps I am wrong to believe that innovative advertising products are not made difficult to find. They are for sale elsewhere. Some spin together RSS and classified advertising (and they make themselves easy to find).
Perhaps my standard for innovation is too high.
They still have time to enter the market.
I'm not giving up.