Commenting on my post about Scoble’s linkblog, Ross over at Rosscode.com suggests that Scoble sort his feeds by those that have given him permission to post full posts to his linkblog, and those that haven’t.
Feed permission – what a great idea! It’s too bad that we can’t just assume that content in a syndicated feed has implicitly offered permission, but if we can’t, so be it. I suspect it is a small minority of people that have a problem with their posts being reposted, and if this permission model took off, maybe they could be shown the error of their ways. I grant permission to anyone anywhere on any planet to repost my content as they see fit, as long as they do not alter it in any way, and they provide a link back to the original post. Damn, maybe we are all going to need to license our content under Creative Commons…
Wouldn’t it be cool to subscribe to only the posts on Scoble’s linkblog where permission has been granted to offer full posts? I’d subscribe to that in a second.
I just had a further thought: what if we could put a token in our RSS feeds that indicates that our content is licensed under Creative Commons? That way, the software that runs Scoble’s linkblog could automagically detect whether full content reposts are allowed or not, and act accordingly!
I’d still prefer to only subscribe to the full posts, but I’m sure that could be arranged as well.
Wow – the potential for this is really exciting! Does this idea make sense, or am I spewing cow dung?
[Update] The comments section for my original linkblog post is heating up. What do you think?
Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.
by J.P. Stewart
27 Oct 2004 at 15:14
Heh, I should have read this entry before following up on the previous post…
I think what you suggest here is a great idea btw. I would add that
As an example (and sort of follow up to my last comment), I know that there is a wide audience to my blog. I know that my coworkers, friends, imediate familay, and relatives all follow my blog. That is quite an audience (which lead me to my content access system that I wrote), and while 95% of the content that I write I have no cares in the world about who reads, every now and then, I write an article which is only targeted towards friends and family or just friends and not family, and keeping it that way is important to me.
As I mentioned, since RSS does not support any identification methods other than username and password (which are not secure enough), none of this maters yet….but maybe some day.
J.P.
by Chris
31 Oct 2004 at 11:38
Jason, thought you might be interested in another perspective on RSS. This blogger doesn’t think RSS scales well (not for bandwidth reasons, but because of “inbox hell”): http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2004/10/10/a_culture_of_feeds_syndication_and_youth_culture.html
On another note (as we’ve talked about before), even the makers of Flickr (at a Vancouver PHPUG meeting) decried the difficulty of creating private RSS feeds. There are definitely uses for secured RSS feeds.
by Jason
31 Oct 2004 at 15:03
I’m definitely starting to see the light – that there are perfectly legitimate uses for secured RSS feeds. Maybe I haven’t explored it enough, but I am subscribed to an RSS feed for my Gmail account, and it is password protected. This isn’t good enough?
J.P. – I’m interested in your concept for multiple tiers of content. It scares me a little, because if I were operating in that type of homogenous composition environment, I would find it much easier to misclassify something and have it exposed to the wrong audience. I like the idea of having a completely different composition environment depending on my audience. It makes it easier to remember who I’m writing for.
Chris, that link is quite interesting. I think the author very accurately points out some of the limitations of RSS, things which I have struggled with, and feel that I’m finally starting to get a handle on. For me, it’s a combination of the tools that I use (I’ve switched entirely to FeedDemon and a PocketPC aggregator called NewsUpdate), and my attitude about my feeds. While it is seductive to try to “stay on top” of my feeds, and constantly mark them all off as read, I have to remind myself that is not necessary, and in fact part of the value I get from my feeds is that I always have content with me on the go (on my PocketPC) when I find myself in those short snippets of time where it is impossible to do anything particularly productive. Okay, I’m rambling…
My last point is that I believe the author of that article you linked to is missing one important point, which is that youth and adults have very different priorities, which necessarily dictate that they spend their attention on very different things. I think it’s naïve to think that youth will eschew email in the corporate world – it’s just not possible. I believe I’m part of the first generation that grew up on IM, and while I still use it daily for work and for play, it can’t possibly replace the stateless aspect of email – that is, that I can “send and forget” with email. IM requires that there be someone on the other end of the line.
Great comments!
by Chris
31 Oct 2004 at 15:48
Good point, Jason. Email hell and RSS hell are different for one important reason: you don’t have to respond (or read) everything that comes in via RSS.
Still, I can already echo what Zephoria’s saying: I’m losing my grounding because I have so much content coming in, and it’s too easy to fragment. Maybe I just don’t know what I’m interested in yet, so I’m overwhelmed by all the things I could be interested in.
Cheers!