We met on the Internet. This wasn't just another pretty interface. My news aggregator gave me everything I wanted and nothing more. But I guess that wasn't enough. This morning, when I woke up and launched the app, there it was: an advertisement for an HP printer.
Maybe it was only a matter of time before RSS aggregators - those handy apps and Web-based services that scoop up blog headlines for easy reading - started serving up ads. The number of blog fans (32 million and counting) is exploding, and the potential for precisely targeted come-ons is hard to resist. "Google has proven that if you target ads well and don't make them intrusive, they work," says Mark Fletcher, CEO of Bloglines (see Rave Awards/Technology, page 94), which will introduce ads this spring. "We will be like Google's AdWords on steroids."
Other players are already on the juice. Small-ébusiness blog specialist Weblogs has been putting ads in its RSS feeds since last fall. Overture, a subsidiary of Yahoo!, is testing ads in RSS feeds. Yes, all these new sales pitches are demure text-only squibs, not vulgar pop-ups. Still, the first flush of romance is fading fast. I got into this relationship for pure news; Iénever wanted a new inkjet.
- Daniel Terdiman
credit: Jesse Jensen
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