Microsoft Renaming RSS in to "Web Feeds"?
The news has been flying around the web in heating discussions of Microsoft renaming RSS in to "Web Feeds" in IE7. Chris Pirillo and Richard MacManus both have good coverage of the topic.

I tend to lean towards Chris' view of the situation:

"It wasn't bad enough we had to convince the world that syndication was a good thing? Here's the real problem: most of these arguments *ARE* correct. If I was forced to choose between one label or the other, I'd likely choose RSS. I hand out cute li'l RSS pins and cute li'l RSS t-shirts all the time - but I don't really care if a feed is Atom, RDF, RSS, or Bligmorp? so long as it works within my aggregator."

But then again, even if RSS is named something different in IE7, us marketers will find a way to not allow that to become a dissadvantage.

RSS 3.0?
Is there a new RSS format to worry about? While a new guy in town has released a specification for RSS 3.0, it won't go further than that. RSS 3.0? Not very likely. Richard MacManus has the full story.

Protecting RSS Feeds From Commercial Republication
Sharen Housely and Robin Good take a good look at a topic we've been discussing many times before: commerically republishing feed content on third-party sites. In the end, their moral is simple: republishing of your feed content will happen, so perhaps we have to learn to live with it. Sharon's advice for protecting your feed is straight-forward:

"Part of feed protection is ensuring that appropriate credit is given, and this can be arranged by including a copyright reference in the final line of the Item Description field of any RSS feed.

Additionally links back to the source website can also be easily integrated in the Item description field.

Teaser copy can also be added to the RSS feed's Item description field linking back to your website."

RSS Enterprise Syndication Servers And NewsMastering: What's Next?
Another good article from Robin Good, this time giving some great insight on the RSS Enterprise market, and again touching RSS radars.

Tips for RSS Advertisers
CMO Magazine has some short but great tips on RSS advertising:

Great, well-targeted creative is crucial, says Kanoodle CMO Mark Josephson, but "I don't think that the marketing rules related to RSS are drastically different. You always want to know what you are paying, how many clicks you're getting, how many conversions you're getting, and if it gives you your ROI."

Some advertisers "are sticking an ad in after every item, even Google. That's annoying," says Pheedo CMO Bill Flitter. "And I'm an advertiser." Pheedo and Google have established differing best-practice guidelines for RSS advertising. Tell, not sell is Pheedo's motto, while Google encourages ad placement at the end of syndicated articles.

Other insights on RSS advertising from CMO Magazine available here.

BBC News Increases Feed CTRs for 30%
"In July, with all the major news events that went with it, the RSS feeds of our news indices delivered 26.7 million click-throughs to the site, a 30% increase on the previous month. This is big business for us, and the momentum continues to gather." Do you need more confirmation that RSS is an important marketing tool and the time to act is now?

An Investment Perspective on the Growing World of RSS
Forbes.com proclaims RSS has become mainstream. As all the statistics available display, this isn't the case yet, but will become in the near future. The article however does provide a good overview of the investment world surrounding RSS.

Cisco PR is Podcasting
Steve Rubel shares the news of Cisco podcasting all audio content provided by their PR, including executive keynotes, news conferences, and educational audio programs geared towards the general public.