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Why Marketing is Broken

Allen Stern claims that RSS is broken because it doesn’t deliver customers to him on a plate. Of course, he then explains that RSS was never designed to rat out it’s subscribers to marketers. Gee, people can anonymously subscribe to my feed. If you think about it, I do know that the subscriber is the kind of person who would subscribe to my particular feed. So that tells me something. Although it doesn’t tell me when they’ve lost interest, or if they intended to unsubscribe, but were too lazy to do so.

But the idea that marketers have any claim on the kind of data that Stern is asking for shows a real lack of understanding. Perhaps Mr. Stern needs to have a long conversation with Doc Searls about Vendor Relationship Management. Yes, traditionally marketers put potential customers into their sights using the kind of stats Stern wants RSS to collect. But the equation isn’t the same on the internet, it isn’t a “one to many” broadcast medium. It’s “many to many” where there’s a democratization of the participants in the network. People are starting to understand that their interest in, and even their raw attention toward a product has a value. And deciding to expose any data to a potential vendor is a customer choice, not a marketers right.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 7:41 am and is filed under culture, innovation, user data, value. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://www.grenswoningen.nl hypotheekvoorduitsland

    Although it doesn’t tell me when they’ve lost interest, or if they intended to unsubscribe, but were too lazy to do so.

    I totally agree with this one,

    We have many subscribers to our website, but when they will buy our service somewhere else we will never know it. And many times they forget to sign out.

  • http://www.grenswoningen.nl Hypotheek voor Duitsland

    again

  • http://www.exposedseo.com ilia seo

    This is what I always wonder myself. Do my email subscribers actually read my posts or did they subscribe with a spam email and never bothered to unsubscribe.

  • http://trafficgeyserseo.com/ Traffic Geyser

    well if you had build trust and reputation with your readers then they will likely visit your website and read your post.

    but a lot of cases like I always receive advertising emails and useless blogpost, I start to stop following their RSS feed..

  • http://www.userinsight.com marketing personas

    Most of the time, the failure of an individual to unsubscribe is a clear indication that its spam. Of course its not in general, but given that unsubscribing is as easy as subscribing, but the “real” ones are actually those that take time in unsubscribing.

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    That's one major problem though-out the net, The increasing number of spam alerts we received everyday. If you're a newbie in dealing market through the net, you should be patient in dealing with e-mail spam or else you'll end up as a trash.

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    I think the info which you gave above is not sufficient to understand the problem of market..Better u post again with additional information..
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    The post not have sufficient info for market doen..the author needs to add more info on this..
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  • williyamb

    Ecommerce Web Design I do know that the subscriber is the kind of person who would subscribe to my particular feed. So that tells me something. Although it doesn’t tell me when they’ve lost interest, or if they intended to unsubscribe, but were too lazy to do so.

  • williyamb

    Ecommerce Web Design People are starting to understand that their interest in, and even their raw attention toward a product has a value.

  • http://www.areatrade.co.uk/pages/58/Affordable/Ecommerce_Web_Design Ecommerce Web Design

    you should be patient in dealing with e-mail spam or else you'll end up as a trash.we will never know it. And many times they forget to sign out.

  • golfman_story

    Great post, really help me alot. Thanks.

    http://sain-web.com

  • http://www.animeshippuuden.com Naruto episode

    More than 800 people have subscribed to my RSS feeds in six months, but the problem is that they never mind to visit when the blog is updated. This makes me feel that the RSS subscription systems is more of failure ones.

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    I believe that RSS is like Google: they know and tell everybody, what they have learned about you. That's why I don't subscribe. It may cause spam on your email.

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    You are right, that the marketers can only guess about the audience choices and it's more like a trial n hunt procedure.

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    People are very keen at times to subscribe RSS feeds from relates blogs and sites. Once done so, they never bother about the updates published. S, if they aren’t really bothered about the updates published they should unsubscribe it, but never seen people doing so.

  • John Parker
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    RSS is very useful on this electronic world now, it provide great things from your site to anywhere.

  • http://luizjogos.com/cat/1/Jogos-de-Carros/p1.htm Jogos de Carros

    Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically, but it is important to subscribe RSS from related sites and more important to unsubscribe if not required. My simple question is, are we really that busy to unsubscribe.

  • http://www.iwantexchange.com/ Ecurrency Trading

    Yeah. Well said in the article that RSS was never designed to rat out it’s subscribers to marketers. Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation, but I don’t believe that today’s marketing is not pointing the right way.

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  • williyamb
  • mmorpg

    Meh. It's not broken, If it was people wouldn't keep advertising, but theya re.

  • steveworth

    I too don't find any use in simplifying FD.
    I choose feeds that I need and I don't need attention tracking at all.
    What I need is more powerful filters to pick out the important info from feeds I do follow, and this can't seem to come in line to be implemented. Jack Charlton

  • downloadmovies

    Hello, I've been playing around with the RSS feeds and they seem to be broken to me, first of all I tried to look for something outside the USA and the results I get are still in the US. Can any one help me out of this issue. download movies

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    Reading the RSS feeds of my friends and posting a tweet with a link when one of them updates. My regular RSS stream only has news feeds in it, not feeds from my friends, and I found I was missing them. So I created this and folded it into my Twitter flow.

  • personalinjuryattorneyomaha

    Reading the RSS feeds of my friends and posting a tweet with a link when one of them updates. My regular RSS stream only has news feeds in it, not feeds from my friends, and I found I was missing them. So I created this and folded it into my Twitter flow. Personal Injury Attorney Omaha

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