Filed under: Odds and ends
TUAW RSS Feed Gets Google Adsense
Hello, everyone who reads TUAW via the RSS feed. I just wanted to let you know about the new ads you may have noticed in the feed. Jason announced this a few moments ago: "some of your favorite Weblogs, Inc. blogs now have Google Adsense in the RSS feeds." He also provides a screenshot of TUAW's feed with the new ads:
Why are we filling your RSS feeds with ads, you ask? Well, it's really simple. Weblogs, Inc. wants to continue providing TUAW full-post RSS feeds to you at no cost and this is quite simply the best way of doing so. Let us know what you think, and make sure you check out Jason's announcement for more information.
Why are we filling your RSS feeds with ads, you ask? Well, it's really simple. Weblogs, Inc. wants to continue providing TUAW full-post RSS feeds to you at no cost and this is quite simply the best way of doing so. Let us know what you think, and make sure you check out Jason's announcement for more information.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Aronm Trimble said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
I noted this article about the same time I noticed some small squiggling that claimed to be an advertisement. My RSS feeds are brought to me via Sage 1.3 in conjunction with Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3; I wonder, is anyone else getting quirky ads like this?
=aron=
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dave said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
I completely understand your situation and I think this is a great solution. At least you didn't place some massive banner at the TOP of the feed, FORCING us to scroll down past to get to the good stuff.
Thanks for a great site and network. I think most of your readers will understand the necessity to pay some bills. You gotta do what you gotta do.
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Kevin said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
I'd like to see the number of comments made listed in the RSS feed.
Thanks!
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Curtis said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
I would much rather have a google adsense advertisment in the RSS feed than having truncated posts. Keep up the great work!
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Matthew said 3:31PM on 8-01-2005
Your main site has google ads on the sidebar, with an ad strewn in every few posts. Something I can manage. Look at your site in Safari RSS.
Unsubscribed.
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Olivier said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
As long as it stays at the bottom of the entry body and does not sneak up floating to the right or between paragraphs, it seems fine. Obviously, it should not start blinking, embedding Flash or other devilry like that.
One more thing: It's an image! Why an image?
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Thomas said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
Ha ha, Sage RSS reader for Firefox already has ad blocking... sort of. I see the tiny tiny Google ads too. Sage can't display them correctly for some reason but it doesn't bother me.
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Pete Freitag said 1:30PM on 6-23-2005
I agree this is a much better solution than truncating posts... But I would guess that a lot of RSS readers might ignore the javascript?
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paul said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
"Weblogs, Inc. wants to continue providing TUAW full-post RSS feeds to you at no cost."
You act like an RSS feed - which comes pre-installed with the FREE blog software you're using and requires absolutely no work from you - is a privilege. It's not. Weblogs, Inc. is putting ads in their RSS feeds because they want to make more profits.
I don't mind if Weblogs, Inc. wants to make more profits, but at least be honest with us. Don't sit here and blow smoke up our asses.
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glad said 6:46AM on 8-10-2005
I onlyn hope you don't do a boing boing on us and fill your page with ads, also those web ads popping up in your rss reader can be quite amusing as the ones that pop up in Boing Boings news feed are usually way off mark, never click on them anyway.
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C.K. Sample, III said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
Paul, relax. First off, we're not running free blog software. We're running off of our own software. That costs money and time to create and maintain. Secondly, RSS feeds, especially on large traffic sites like those in the Weblogs, Inc. network take up quite a bit of bandwidth and bandwidth costs money. We're not trying to swindle anyone. We're not saying we need to do this to stay afloat. We're simply saying we need to do this to leverage the costs of maintaining these high traffic RSS feeds.
Plus, it's friggin' cool that we're flagshipping a new form of Google Adsense.
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Brian Alvey said 11:36AM on 12-18-2005
Answering a few of these fine comments:
1. We don't put the number of comments in the feeds since that would make them update all day long and sensitive feed readers (which means all of them) would constantly reload our posts and anger our readers.
2. RSS feeds ignore JavaScript.
3. Sage has a problem with the ads. I don't know if it's the PNG format or some other Sage-specific thing, but that's the only feed reader I've seen the images fail like that in. Opera I'll look into...
Thanks!
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paul said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
The blog you guys have here could be done with any free blog software out there (Wordpress, MovableType, etc). If you chose to develop your own, then any money you spent is your own fault.
I never said you guys were swindling us, I just felt the explanation was stated in corporate speak. The ads on RSS feeds will add to profits, and that's all I wanted mentioned. But you guys were pretending like you were doing us a favor. You're not. Go ahead and take away the RSS feed, and then watch all your visitors go away.
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Laurie said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
C.K., Scott and I had a meeting last week about how badly we wanted to keep doing favors for paul but we decided against it :)
The ugly truth is that we're all greedy moguls who hope to finance new cars, large NYC apartments and tropical vacations off this gig and the lack of ads in the RSS feeds were getting in the way of that.
Anyone have a problem with that?
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Dave Taylor said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
Sorry, hate it. Unsubscribing from your RSS feed (unless I can get the fine folk at NewsGator to install a blocking script) and blogging about the commercial pollution of the RSS information space too. Very disappointing, Weblogs, Inc. Very disappointing.
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Steve M said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
So I decided to give you all the benefit of the doubt and clicked on one of these ads, Safari launches and I get a web page that says "You must be running Internet Explorer to view this pages web content" popped up. I am still laughing. Don't think those ads are gonna do much good for Mac users...
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Sachiko said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
Dear paul and Dave Taylor, you are right. RSS is a right, not a privilege. Weblogs Inc owes you. So much. After all you have done for them. And ads just make the whole RSS completely unreadable. They should have asked you first, those selfish greedy bastards!. That's why you UNSUBSCRIBE. And you are right: everything should be free. Everything. Always.
Please email you address to Weblogs Inc and Laurie will bring you a beer every day and give you a massage while you read your RSS feeds...
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Ryan Jensen said 7:13PM on 11-22-2005
Say hello to Adsense TOS: "Web pages may not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads. This includes encouraging users to click on the ads or to visit the advertisers' sites as well as ***drawing any undue attention*** to the ads. This activity is strictly prohibited in order to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as "click here," "support us," "visit these links," or other similar language that could apply to any ad, regardless of content." (asterisks mine)
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Olivier said 4:17PM on 6-16-2005
I'll ask again then: Why the Shell are those ads images?
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jimm said 4:40PM on 8-31-2005
Ads placed in an RSS feed are counter to the philosophy and raison d'etre of RSS. The subsrciber of the site's RSS feed will eventually see ads... if the summarized articles are of interest to the reader they'll go to the site and be exposed to the ads. Do you readers really think that the current ads in the RSS feed will not grow in size, complexity and annoyance as time goes on? Wake up! This ad placement policy will destroy the appeal of RSS! You are seeing the start of it now on TUAW!
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