News feed online

RSS The distribution of
RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) is not yet available in Switzerland.
large. Nevertheless, the new technology is interesting for the advertising industry. "No, at the moment RSS is not available at
us," says Urs Holderegger from NZZ Online. At the beginning of August
media weblog dienstraum.com that the
Those responsible at Falkenstrasse should be careful not to let their editorial
content with RSS feeds (see box). After the
The Washington Post announced in mid-July that it would be expanding its RSS feeds
with advertising, American experts believe that a new
age for traditional web publishing as well as for the distribution of
and use of news and advertising content had begun. The talk was of
a new era of "consumer controlled media", which will soon be
will dawn. With the announcement by the Washington Post
a medium reacted to a technology that on the one hand offers users
convenient and effective fast and spam-free web surfing
which, on the other hand, puts traditional Internet advertising at the back of the queue.
is pending.

Is a new era dawning?
In recent months, media outlets everywhere have launched new RSS services.
announced or upgraded their websites accordingly. Here too
country, media such as Le Temps, Weltwoche, Wochenzeitung
or Tages-Anzeiger offer their own RSS services. As a rule, they limit
Users can click on a blue button, if available, to open the
RSS logos at the end of the URL line of your browser and extract the
Site news as plain text. This can even be combined with a
Reduce the slider to the title bar. There are still only a few
Subscribe to actual feeds and have news updated automatically.
But does the technology herald the beginning of a new era? "RSS is
currently not suitable for the masses," says Dominik Janko from the media agency
Optimedia. "People think in images." And where these are missing, the
technology is only of interest to specialists, such as
journalists or media planners. Martin Radelfinger, CEO of
Online marketer AdLink shows no signs of a paradigm shift
on the Internet.
But the technology is still interesting for the advertising industry.
Radelfinger distinguishes between push and pull methods.
It is interesting, for example, when advertisers offer a subscribed
RSS feed targeted advertising based on the login profile
could "push" behind it. "Then we can advertise in the right
context," says Radelfinger. Less effective advertising is
against it if the user obtains his own information from the Internet.
"pulls" and advertising, if it reaches him at all, is thus uncontrolled.
RSS feeds are attractive when it comes to expensive journalistic content.
which are refinanced either by the provider or via advertising.
need to be developed. Here, development is still in the
Experimentation phase. Does an RSS feed lead to a site with advertising or
does the feed itself already contain any? Differences are for users
not always easy to recognize.

Not yet an issue at NZZ Online
At NZZ Online, everything will remain as it is this year. "We
are not yet fully convinced of the user benefits," says Urs
Holderegger. In view of increasing visitor numbers on NZZ Online
and an upcoming switch to a new content management system
system, RSS is currently more of a side issue. "But you have to
adapt to the market and think about it when the time comes," says
Holderegger.

René Worni