Time for the next (really) big Internet idea

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob Adams <radams () ngiweb com>
Date: July 7, 2005 2:36:27 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Time for the next (really) big Internet idea


--- David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom com>
> Date: July 6, 2005 6:12:51 PM EDT
> To: undisclosed-recipient:;
> Subject: Time for the next (really) big Internet
> idea

The article now requires a $2.95 payment to view, but
I found it via Google News.  If you like, here's the
full text:

Time for the next (really) big Internet idea
By Hiawatha Bray  |  July 4, 2005
Boston Globe

If you still aren't paying any heed to the RSS
revolution, perhaps this will get your attention: $100
million.

That's the amount two Harvard guys plan to invest in
new businesses that use RSS. It's a healthy chunk of
cash for a technology that doesn't cost a cent. The
software behind the World Wide Web is also free, yet
Web-based companies like Google, eBay, and Amazon.com
have made out all right. RSS might be the next
billion-dollar Internet idea.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, a method for
allowing Internet users to automatically obtain
up-to-date information from their favorite sources.

The concept was conceived in 1999, but unknown to most
of us until 2004, the year of the weblog. The bloggers
who hounded the presidential candidates and humbled
Dan Rather used RSS to broadcast their words. Now,
nearly every media company in the world is imitating
them, with RSS ''feeds" sent from their websites to
millions of subscribers.

2005 is shaping up as the year of the podcast and the
vlog -- audio and video programming created by
independent authors and posted on the Internet. Again,
it's RSS time. A fan of Al Franken need never miss his
radio show. He can use a bit of RSS-based software to
check for each new episode and automatically download
it for later listening.

Consumers can enjoy the benefits of RSS without paying
a dime. Software to let you subscribe to RSS website
feeds can be downloaded free; one such program is
built into the popular Firefox Internet browser. You
can also get free podcasting and vlogging programs.
The latest version of Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes
software includes listings for about 20,000 podcasts.
Click a button, and the iTunes music player locks onto
the correct RSS feed and downloads the podcasts of
your choice.

All very well, but is there any money in it?

A host of companies are already trying to find out.

Indeed LLC of Stamford, Conn., is using RSS to shake
up the online job search business. Instead of going to
a single site like, say, Monster.com, to check job
listings, you can visit indeed.com and see jobs listed
on Monster, CareerBuilder, Hotjobs, and a number of
other sites, as well as newspaper want ads.

Chief executive Paul Forster says the Indeed site adds
about 100,000 new listings each day. And the site uses
RSS to keep users up to date. You enter a job title --
network engineer, for instance -- and Indeed generates
an RSS feed for that particular job search. Add the
feed to your RSS software, and you can have new job
listings pop up on your computer screen.

Caution: Don't try this one at work.

There are lots more RSS-based business models coming
together. Jim Moore and John Palfrey want to help
finance them. Moore is a former senior fellow at the
Berkman Center on Internet at Society at Harvard Law
School; Palfrey is still at Berkman, serving as the
center's executive director. With help from Ritchie
Capital Management of Geneva, Ill., they have raised
$20 million for their new venture, RSS Investors LP,
and expect to bring in $80 million more.

Moore and Palfrey are looking for companies that will
not only apply RSS in innovative ways, but also clean
up the technology's inevitable problems. Consider the
double-edged matter of spam.

Those mounds of digital junk in your inbox could serve
as fertilizer for new RSS businesses. Say you're a
company that wants to promote a special deal to
customers who've asked to hear from you. Use e-mail,
and your valuable message may be lost to an
overzealous spam filter. Or you could hang an RSS feed
on your website. It's the ultimate in opt-in
marketing, since your customer must ask to receive the
feed. And since it's not e-mail, your messages never
get mistaken for spam. So companies that provide
RSS-based marketing solutions are worth a look.

But RSS has begun to develop its own spam problem.
''As much as a third of what goes out on the Web as
RSS right now has the qualities of spam," Palfrey
said.

We've all seen ''Google spam." Pornographers, for
example, put popular search terms like ''jennifer
lopez" on their Web pages dozens of times, in order to
push their pages nearer to the top of Google rankings.

You can automate the process with RSS. With the aid of
some complicated gimmicks, a blog with an RSS feed can
be set to ping Internet search engines, thus making a
spammer's website look much more popular than it
really is. Since the search engines rank websites by
popularity, this RSS gimmick can drive a mediocre site
to the top of the heap.

Palfrey predicts that this kind of RSS abuse will only
worsen, and he expects to finance companies that will
offer RSS spam solutions.

There's also the problem of RSS overload.

If a million people subscribe to a data feed from The
Boston Globe, their constant hits on the site could
overwhelm our servers. What's needed is a network of
feed collectors that could spread the load over a
larger number of computers, the way Akamai Technology
in Cambridge smooths out spikes in Internet traffic
for CNN and other big firms.

Already a number of RSS ''ping" services like
Weblogs.com have begun offering such services. Moore
and Palfrey think there's room for more.

After all, the age of RSS is just beginning. Don't
doubt that it's for real: Microsoft Corp.'s next
operating system, the oft-delayed Longhorn, will have
RSS built in. The company is even adding a set of
technical enhancements to RSS, and giving them the
blueprints so anybody can use them.

Why so generous?

Microsoft is convinced that RSS is about to become a
universal standard for sharing all kinds of data
across all kinds of networks.

Moore and Palfrey think so, too; they're betting $100
million on it.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray () globe com.


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