New Hope for Branded RSS Readers

Branded RSS Readers never really took off, although they provide marketers with uncounted benefits of better connecting with their customers, while at the same time offering them a valuable service.

I see two key issues preventing branded RSS Reader growth:

a] Most marketers are not ready to invest enough to provide a fully-featured advanced RSS Reader, instead opting to provide branded readers with nothing but the basic feature-sets.

b] If you're an internet user, why use a basic feature-set RSS reader with messages from marketers, if you can get the same functionality for free and without all the added branding?

Notice: company's with strong pull with their prospects, especially media companies, can still get away offering nothing but the simplest features. If you have customer or visitor loyalty, you have pull.

Well, things might actually be looking up ...

As of recently almost no advanced RSS Reader is available for free any longer. Attensa, FeedDeemon and a host of other advanced RSS readers have taken the "purchase" road, starting to charge for their Readers.

So here's an idea for marketers --> why not sponsor an advanced RSS Reader from top RSS Reader vendors, brand it and then give it away for free to your customers?

You'll get a branded RSS reader at a lower cost and your customers will get a valuable free service.

This idea came to me just now, reading how the American Red Cross is working on providing a free branded RSS Reader with their feeds pre-loaded [via Micropersuasion].

Actually, we've been doing this for a long time.

Awasu definitely falls into the category of "advanced feed reader". In fact, you'll be hard pressed to find a reader with more sophisticated features than Awasu's, from plugin channels to retrieve information from *any* data source, not just RSS/Atom feeds, to channel hooks that let you manipulate the information in any way you want once it arrives, to built-in XSLT support to ease interfacing with web services and other XML-based applications.

And while our branded free reader is definitely affordable, we recently finished a project that implements your idea exactly. The client wanted to give away something that had intrinsic value (i.e. not a free version) and so sponsored one of our paid versions to give to their customers.

Posted by: Taka at April 6, 2006 7:29 PM

Taka,

Would you mind providing some more information about the branded reader you are talking about?

Perhaps giving some screenshots and a presentation of the features, as well as some results if possible?

All the best,
Rok

Posted by: Rok Hrastnik at April 6, 2006 8:21 PM

We are compiling a list of reader manufacturers that we will promoting on our radio program on WS Radio.com, a station reaching 1.3 million listeners. We will also be providing these listings, beginning the week of April 24, 2006 on the show's web site at http://www.rssray.com and making them available to Rok as well. If anone reading this has information pertinent to the topic, please send it to ray@rssray.com.

Rok's comments concerning branded reader opportunities for marketers is astute and a great way for marketers to differentiate themselves as information resources of value to to their customers.

Posted by: RSS Ray at April 7, 2006 2:22 PM

Rok, check out the real life implementation of what you described well. We currently have branded (free) RSS readers with some advanced functionality live on FT.com, http://news.ft.com/desktopalerts Alice.it (the largest portal in Italy) http://computer.virgilio.it/rssreader/index.html and on some US sites owned by Clear Channel TV, e.g. Sant Antonio WOAI, http://www.woai.com/desktopalerts/.

We have a number of other high profile publishers in the pipeline who will launch our branded readers in the next few weeks.

matteo

Posted by: Matteo B at April 12, 2006 12:05 PM

Tristana Custom Branded RSS Reader was the first completely brandable reader on the market back in 2003. It's affordable and completely customizable. Over 500,000 readers installed around the world. It is an Advanced reader and can be customized to fit your needs.

Tristana was recently purchased by a U.S. Company (RSS Focus) which is about to release a new fully branded single feed reader. It will be similar to what Southwest Airlines has done with the "Ding" service.

Using the RSS Focus backend and custom mini-reader you can personalize content to each user, track by user, schedule articles/items, included photos, podcast, all enclosures, and build a user database. Dynamic content is also available. They will be launching later this month at http://www.rssfocus.com.

Any Questions can be sent to my attention or info@rssfocus.com.

Ron, If you like a preview please contact me.

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