While customer and visitor ownership may still be a target for online media and marketers, achieving this goal is getting near to impossible.

Some years ago internet users would select a couple of favorite media sites, set-up their base there and primarily use these sites to get their daily fix of news and other relevant content.

Who wants to surf dozens of sites every day, if you can get all you need from a few favorites?

RSS turned this upside down.

Today you select an RSS Reader, desktop or online, subscribe to a few dozen feeds, and then get your latest content from multiple sources through a single interface, without having to surf at all.

At least in theory.

In reality the RSS adoption curve is still not where we would like it to be. But there is still no doubt that visitor ownership is slowly deteriorating. In part because of RSS, in part because smart players like Yahoo! started making it easy for their users to subscribe to feeds and in part of course also because there are millions of places to go for content today.

Years ago we proposed that online media and marketers capitalize on low RSS adoption by offering their users branded RSS Readers.

Some did it, but very few achieved much success. Why?

My theory is that they didn't provide enough added value.

In a March 05, 2005 article titled Branded RSS Aggregator Strategies and New Customizable RSS Aggregator I gave 11 tips on how to make branded RSS Readers work for you.

And no, it wasn't just taking a low-end Reader and branding it with your brand visuals.

Haven't seen any developments along those lines yet.

But that's not really the point.

It seems that LA Times is one of the companies that gets the concept of added value.

According to psfk.com, their strategy in offering a braded online RSS Reader through MyLATimes isn't about offering "yet another RSS Reader", but rather about adding editorial to the mix.

Their reasoning in short:

(a) Users still don't care to learn what RSS is. They want a simple solution they don't have to learn about.

(b) Offer them a simple RSS Reader that takes the RSS word out of the equation.

(c) Get them to stick by helping them access most relevant feeds quickly and easily ... by providing them with editorially selected feeds. Top external content for no work, such as having to search for it.

(d) Still allow users to subscribe to any RSS feed, if they wish to do so.

What's the added value?

Little work, top content.

Of course, the question remains, does it still make sense to do your own branded RSS Reader? Especially now, with IE entering the game and making RSS even easier and accessible to millions more?

Coupled with editorially selected RSS feeds and NewsMastering (not part of the MyLATimes story), yes.

Especially for niche players, this might be the answer to at least getting visitor ownership in your niche category. Whether you're a media site or a traditional marketer.

(a) Create an easy-to-use branded RSS Reader.

(b) Select top content sources in your industry. Create automatic RSS Radars for hot topics and make them available from the start page.

(c) Provide your visitors with hand-picked RSS feed suggestions, which they can easily add to your branded RSS Reader.

(d) Create a NewsMaster RSS feed, where you provide "the best of the best" news and commentary from other sources in your industry.

(e) And if you really want to get crazy, add a blog, some social networking and a rich content database of your own.