According to this eWeek article, shortly Feedster will begin including its “sponsored links” (paid advertising) in its search-keyword-based webfeeds.
As I’ve written before, I don’t have a problem with the general concept of ads in webfeeds, as long as it’s implemented considerately. However, I was a bit surprised to hear about this ad deal between Feedster and Kanoodle – mainly because Feedster’s service is still pretty buggy, especially its custom webfeeds. Even Feedster founder Scott Johnson openly acknowledges his service’s many quality problems (to his great credit, I might add)…
I follow developments on many topics, so I used to use Feedster’s keyword-based custom feeds quite often. In concept, it’s a great service. In practice, the feeds I set up would almost always cease functioning after a few days or weeks. At the moment, I cannot get that particular feature to work at all on Feedster – for instance, for the past few days I’ve kept trying to set up a custom feed on Feedster based on the search term “digital camera” (something I thought would attract a fair amount of advertising). Each time I’ve tried, Feedster has not set up the feed but instead routed me to its home page.
In contrast, the less-well-known service Blogdigger offers a custom keyword-based feed service that I’ve found extremely easy to use and reliable. I’ve gotten into the habit of using Blogdigger for custom feeds instead of Feedster. (I wrote about this before.)
If I were Kanoodle, I would want my first venture into the webfeed ad space to be at least functional – otherwise, none of the people paying for webfeed ads would be happy, and Kanoodle probably wouldn’t get paid as much.
I understand, from a marketing perspective, the appeal of Feedster over Blogdigger. Currently, Feedster is far more widely known and used among the current and rapidly expanding base of webfeed users. Indeed, I rely on Feedster’s Feedfinder service quite often myself, since that does appear to be reliable. Kanoodle wants the ads it supplies to reach the widest possible audience, and given Feedster’s popularity I wouldn’t be surprised if it has a far larger user base than Blogdigger. However, if Feedster’s custom feeds don’t work much or most of the time, those ads won’t get out anyway.
It’s a quandary.
I like Feedster, and I deeply appreciate Scott Johnson’s intense labors to deliver that service. I want to see Feedster grow and improve. I realize that an infusion of ad income from Kanoodle might help make that possible. However, I’m still puzzled. Has Kanoodle actually tried recently to create a custom feed through Feedster?
Well, I’ll be watching this issue to see what happens. It’ll be interesting.
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