1. Marshall,

Appreciate your remarks, even if we don't quite agree. Although we certainly believe that the use of content on the feedpass page is "fair use", we understand that some content owners may or may not want others creating links/feedpass pages that point to a particular feed.

Admittedly, our service is paid for by advertising, much like this blog. However, feedpass is primarily a subscription vehicle. That's why only the last 4 posts (and usually not full feeds of those items)even appear on a feedpass page. It isn't a substitute for actually subscribing to your blog. It's a way to greatly enhance blog subscriptions by making the process easier for most people. It greatly simplifies the process and educates people along the way.

Now, about the revenue sharing. Let me clarify. If someone create a feedpass for a feed that they own and have claimed, we give them 2:3 page views. Plus, we give them, as the owner of the content, 1:3 page views for any other feedpass pages created by others for that feed/blog. So it's actually a good thing for he content owner to claim the feed. It means anyone can link to a "subscribe" page for the feed AND the content owner still gets 1:3 page views.

Sure, for unclaimed feeds, feedpass gets 2:3 page views and the feedpass link creator gets the other. So, you might think we don't want content owners to register/claim their feeds, right? Wrong. In fact, we believe that anyone who owns a feed should claim it with feedpass. It's good for everyone.

I'll say this. If there are any feed publishers out there who don't want anyone to be able to create a feedpass for their site, send your contact information to support@feedpass.com along with the name/URL of the feed. We'll remove any feed publisher from our system that doesn't want to play and we'll simply notify our users, when they attempt to create a feedpass, what that publisher's stance is on the matter.

Jim

Posted at 5:13PM on May 19th 2006 by Jim

2. I see yuo've been drinking a little bit of the Calacanis juice, Marshall. I would have expected you to think a little deeper on this.

This is nothing more than paying a distributor of content to distribute it. If I list this blog on my blogroll (I do) and someone subscribes from my blog, why shouldn't I get a bit of revenue for helping you grow your subscriber base? It is no different than tv or radio broadcasting making money showing a licensed tv show. I think this is extremely smart. If Feedpass can get some large websites to encourage new RSS subscribers for other website's feeds, than that'll mean more overall subscribers. Which is very good for publishers. Putting a financial incentive behind the promotion and distribution of RSS is very smart. And beneficical for everyone.

Posted at 6:06PM on May 19th 2006 by peter caputa

3. Thanks for the thoughts Peter, I'm going to consider them and respond in a bit. Jim, likewise, thanks for responding. More in a bit.

Posted at 6:09PM on May 19th 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick

4. Jim: I basically agree with your position, but would strongly encourage you to reconsider the particulars of your opt-out scheme. Instead of asking publishers to email you, just look at each site's robots.txt and see if your user-agent is disallowed... if it is, drop the feed. (And make sure you publish the name of your user-agent somewhere that folks can easily find.)

Posted at 6:40PM on May 20th 2006 by Roger Benningfield

5. I've always been of the opinion that if someone republishes my blog with links, then I'm gaining via Google juice. They too gain, via their AdSense, but I doubt I'm losing anything from their copying of my feed. Now, it's clearly the law that reproducing a copyrighted RSS feed in full is a copyright violation. To comply with that law, you simply have to excerpt. End of story.

Posted at 7:51PM on May 20th 2006 by Randy Charles Morin

6. Marshall, I'm eager to see any new thoughts on this. I am also on the fence.

Peter's arguements aren't persuasive from a legal standpoint, but he makes a good point anyway. Allow people to make money off linking to other's conent and they will do so more often. If you play this out, though, I could see people linking to, say, my content, repackaged by this company to include ads that they and the linker share. I wouldn't see page views or ad impressions. It would be a clear copyright infringement and wouldn't last. However, I could see a situation where I as the content creator was also given a cut, and then I might be more interested. The revenue, plus the incentive for others to link, might be enough for me to play ball.

Anyway, I should really be writing this on my own blog... :-)

One question: are ads inserted into the feed as well, or just on the landing page?

Posted at 9:28PM on May 20th 2006 by michael arrington

7. Ok, so I owe this thread another comment. I've been thinking about it - on my day off - so it must be perplexing.

As a humorous analogy perhaps - how would we feel if Yahoo ads ran beside everyone's del.icio.us archives and taggers got a portion of the revenue from their archives - thus having incentive to highlight and point to resources of wide interest that they didn't themselves create. Now in some ways this is what FeedPass is doing - you find a dynamic resource you want to point others to and Feedpass provided a preview - short excerpt of the 4 most recent items in that feed. It's a more dynamic identifier than a URL link to an item in a social bookmarking archive - because it's a dynamic resource you're pointing to.

That's the most sympathetic reading on this I can think of. Nonetheless, I would think that transparency here is key. I honestly like everything about Feedpass except the Adsense rub (I would pay a small subscription for the otherwise quality service were it not for this - but I'm always for subscribing to services instead of advertising). How about listing on the page who created it, wether they own the feed, and where the Adsense revenue is going to? Maybe that's just crazy. Maybe this is part of a new paradigm where knowledge discovery is rewarded financially in addition to content creation - it's hard to feel this is in good faith when it's not more transparent though.

I think I'm convinced on the preview as not a substitution for the items behind the preview themselves and more distribution is good. This is just not clearly enough differentiated from the all too common act of scraping feeds and running adsense around them in order for Feedpass as it stands now to feel comfortable to me.

And I gotta wonder about the straight-up copyright issue here. Tough call. More clairity = good.

Posted at 1:58AM on May 21st 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick

8. Ahh...nothing like a little controversy. Michael, let me hit your questions directly:

1. Feedpass is all about driving page views and impressions to sites like yours. The content on our pages is story titles and excerpts from just the 4 most recent posts. In fact, I've pulled even the excerpts off as of tonight to make a final decision on just how much content we'll show. Definitely not full feeds...although we may end up letting the publishers ultimately make this decision when they claim their content.

2. You said, "I could see a situation where I as the content creator was also given a cut, and then I might be more interested. The revenue, plus the incentive for others to link, might be just enough for me to play ball." Good news. That's exactly what we do and why we built feedpass in the first place. When you verify that you are the owner of a feed, and provide a AdSense ID, we give you credit for 1:3 page views for any feedpass page created based off of your feed/blog URL. We give 1:3 to the person who created the feedpass (so 2:3 page views if you own the content and use a feedpass), and we keep 1:3 for ourselves. It's a true win-win-win.

3. Your question: "Are ads inserted into the feed as well, or just on the landing page?" Answer: Just the landing page. We don't touch your feed. In fact, if you use another service that does place ads in your feed, they may well show up on our landing pages, but the credit for those ads is all yours.

4. We think any publisher who says, "Feedpass do not republish our feeds!" (http://www.geeknewscentral.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5952) should rethink and realize that feedpass is their friend. As a content publisher, it's all about driving more eyes to your content and pushing those eyes to subscribe. Feedpass just makes it easier than ever. I like how you put it, "Allow people to make money off linking to other's conent and they will do so more often." And isn't that what all the publishers want anyway? The time to reward these "linkers" for promoting your content is now. The way to do it is with feedpass.

5. We've said it before and we'll say it again. We'll restrict feedpass creation for any feed URL that any publisher doesn't want promoted via our service. The good folks at Geek Central posted their "threat" tonight, probably figuring that we aren't rational people and might resist. But, within the next 24 hours or so (just finishing some code), it will be impossible for anyone to create a feedpass for their domain. Of course, if they decide to change their minds, we won't hold it against them...we'll open it right back up.

I look forward to more discussion on these issues. I believe that, as a community, we can make feedpass valuable for content publishers, linkers, and readers alike.

Jim
Feedpass

Posted at 2:20AM on May 21st 2006 by Jim Woolley

9. Sorry. The Geek Central link I used doesn't appear to work. Here's one that should:

http://www.geeknewscentral.com/archives/006094.html

Jim
Feedpass

Posted at 2:24AM on May 21st 2006 by Jim Woolley

10. Marshall,

Thanks for taking time to comment on the issue again. As a del.icio.us user myself, I would agree that financial reward for tagging is not only questionable, but wrong, as it would ultimately undermine the real value of such a tool. Eveything would be tagged with high paying keywords, like mesothelioma, even for totally unrelated items.

Also, sites like Yahoo and others are already advertising to users on the My Yahoo! page while your content, including story titles and summaries, is shown. (Users can change these settings to view just headlines, etc.) However, there is only one party benefiting from the banner ads on the page...and that's Yahoo.

What about Gmail? Google's own email service is a classic example of monetizing "other people's content." Whether the email contains a note from your Mom, or feed content delivered by FeedBlitz, you'll see targeted ads. Who's making money on these ads? Not the person who sent the email or published the feed content. No, just Google.

Feedpass comes in on the front end of the deal. Once a user has subscribed to your feed, odds are good that the user won't look at your feedpass page again. Instead, he will enjoy your content through his favorite reader, live bookmark, rss-email tool, etc. Getting summaries of the last 4 posts with links is great, but it's no substitute for the actual feed content. But getting a user to subscribe is quite a task, and given the state of RSS Usability (Scoble says "RSS Usability Sucks! http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/10/30/rss-usability-sucks/"), it seems to me that any solid effort to make it easier for users, makes good sense.

Now about transparency. I think just about everyone in the world knows that if they click on an advertisement on a page, someone benefits. I think a common assumption would be that the company that owns the site would be the benefactor. In this case, it could be the company (us), the content creator (you), or just someone who thought your site was worth sharing. I'm just not convinced that we need to put the person's info up in flashing lights.

I'm sure this isn't the end of this discussion, but I hope it's the beginning of some mutual understanding about the goals of both content publishers and a company like feedpass.

Jim
Feedpass

Posted at 3:17AM on May 21st 2006 by Jim Woolley

11. Marshall: Good for you for raising important points about copyright and ethics in bloggerdom.

I was excited to read about FeedPass, given that it seems like a highly effective, easily implementable way to educate staff in institutional/corporate settings about the wonders of RSS (and I would think you would certainly be in favor of the broadest possible use of RSS and education efforts concerning RSS).

I agree with you, though, that is seems as though FeedPass would be exploiting shamelessly the blogging efforts of others. On the other hand, is it only Google which is to be allowed to make any money on the Internet? I don?t see much difference between FeedPass and much of what Google does.

Interestingly, Steven Cohen of Library Stuff in his posting Feedpass = RSS Education doesn?t even address the matter of copyright and intellectual property theft?and I would think that as a librarian he would be highly keyed in to such matters (although librarians of the Library 2.0 ilk seem so excited about Web 2.0 and information dissemination that they are playing fast and loose with intellectual property rights).

My big question at this point that I wish you would address is: Why couldn?t a smart programmer simply provide an open source version of FeedPass that librarians could use to educate patrons about RSS that would be free of the major turnoff of the immediate talk on the FeedPass demo about Adsense and monetization? As a librarian, I just want to educate users about RSS feeds as a way for them to acquire information about, say, recent key papers in the medical literature. I admire your skill in the Web 2.0 realm greatly, having seen you just a few weeks ago with a doctor explaining cogently to that physicians how to fully harness RSS.

The FeedPass concept is a great one, but Jim?s talk of bloggers having to opt in to the FeedPass system to prevent their content from being pilfered by FeedPass for Jim?s financial gain is the same sort of sophistry undergirding the whole Google Book copyright-infringement-on-a-massive scale project. It is unreasonable and absurd for Goggle and FeedPass to keep arguing that authors have to opt in to prevent outright theft. Are authors supposed to opt in to the dozens of Web 2.0 startups that wish to parasitically feed off the efforts of authors? Get real.

I think the FeedPass concept is a highly valuable one. I immediately forwarded to co-workers the email alerts I got of postings about it so that we could look into implementing it at work as part of our education efforts about RSS. However, given that I work for a nonprofit that values integrity and upright conduct, I can just see red flags going up about the blatant commercial aspects and the copyright infringement concerns.

Bottom line: Quick--somebody in the open source RSS community make a version of FeedPass that nonprofits could use that doesn?t feed of the work of others and that doesn?t so blatantly encourages unethical behavior.

Good for you, Marshall, for having such a fine sense of integrity. A rare commodity these days, sad to say.

Hope

Posted at 9:04AM on May 21st 2006 by Hope

12. While I am not commenting on the legal issues involved here but here's a word of caution for Adsense publishers who are willing to share their Adsense ID to Feedpass.

Google has something called Smart Pricing - "one poorly converting site can result in smart pricing impacting an entire adsense account, even sites completely unrelated to the poorly converting one".

Now when you the Feedpass feed has your ID, it essentially becomes your website and could face the smart pricing effect.

Posted at 12:24PM on May 21st 2006 by Amit Agarwal

13. As someone who believes in the publish and subscribe model being more about lead generation than monetizing eyeballs, I like your suggestion Hope and wonder whether a service initiator would not be better served by developing the reputation as the person who provided a sleek, highly functional and easy to explain intro to RSS tool like Feedpass without trying to directly monetize it. As Jim pointed out in his first comment, this blog is funded by Adsense as well but its biggest value to me is certainly in lead generation. Just a thought there.

Posted at 1:50PM on May 21st 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick

14. There's one thing that escapes me here. A typical FeedPass page has the words "RSS", "subscribe", "feed" pasted all over so, unsurprisingly, AdSense is serving ads about RSS, blogging, newsreaders, etc. As far as I know, those are not very well paying keywords. All traces of relevance between your feed and the ads that get served seems to be gone. Any comments?

Posted at 3:39PM on May 21st 2006 by Ugo Cei

15. Ugo - I had thought of that and keep forgetting to mention it too! That right there could be the biggest problem. Oh for all the debate!

Posted at 3:44PM on May 21st 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick

16. Amit, great point. I've always been weary of publishing my ID on other people's sites. But mostly I'm afraid of getting caught up in click-fraud rings.

Posted at 2:15PM on May 22nd 2006 by Randy Charles Morin

17. Marshall, thanks for highlighting this, I had no idea. My blogs may not be the coolest, best or most profitable, but they are my own work and it seems very cheeky that someone else can come along and profit from them. Why don't they try creating their own!

To Jim from Feedpass - would it really be so difficult for you to allow bloggers to opt in rather than out? Google Sitemaps and technorati both have very simple systems by which ownership can be verified, surely you could do the same?

Posted at 11:16AM on Jun 7th 2006 by Kate

18. Kate,

I hate to say it, but you've been fooled. Feedpass doesn't steal your content or keep people away from your site. On the contrary, the tool is designed to drive people to your site with article/story titles and brief excerpts only.

If you don't understand this, then you're probably like many of Michael Arrington's drones that complained without actually looking at the tool. Just look at this Feedpass and you'll see what we mean:

http://www.feedpass.com/ksl

You'll see that the amount of content shown is far from being a replacement for reading the story. All links go directly to the content owner's site and, for users that like the content, we make it incredibly easy to subscribe using dozens of tools, including RSS readers and rss-to-email services.

So issue that we've heard about most is related to the monetization of the Feedpass page using Google AdSense. Why? Because we let anyone create a Feedpass page that points to any RSS content. So, someone who loves the "Kate" blog could create a Feedpass page to highlight your site and direct subscribers to your content. Is this good for you? Absolutely! It's also good for the person who created the Feedpass, since we give credit for 1:3 page views to that person. And if you actually "encouraged" users to create Feedpass links to your content, you could reward them for promoting your feed! Feedpass takes the other 2:3 page views, unless you (as the content/blog owner) claim your feed so we have your AdSense ID and can allocate 1:3 views to you. Of course, if you own/claim the content AND create your own Feedpass page, you get 2:3 page views and we only take 1:3.

Why all the fuss about having to claim? Without it, we have no way of attaching your Google AdSense ID to the content and verifying you as the owner. The process has proven to be easy enough for most. We've had only a handful of users who couldn't get it to work for them, and we managed to help them through it or claim it for them manually. We've even suggested a partnership with a site like Technorati, allowing content owners that have already claimed via Technorati.com to prove ownership to Feedpass. We haven't heard back from Technorati, but we believe this would be a great service...allowing Technorati to act as a clearinghouse, if you will, verifying blog ownership.

Let me also make one thing very clear. Google and Technorati have claiming processes, but they also index sites without any claim ever being made on the blog. So while "claiming" is opt-in, opt-out isn't really an option on Technorati. For example, a new MySpace blog that mentioned Feedpass was created, and showed up in Technorati within minutes, with no claim being made. Google Sitemaps is a way to help Google crawl your site more effectively, but Google can and will find you even without a Sitemap. Keeping Google from searching your pages (opt-out) requires techical know-how that goes well beyond your average user and isn't even available to users who don't have their own domain. This is the case with many of the off-the-shelf blogging tools. Want to keep Google, Feedster and Technorati from indexing them? Good luck, unless you really do want to keep your blog in a cave. Both companies then benefit from the use of the content. Google sells advertising alongside the search results, and Gmail even shows targeted ads when you elect to receive an RSS feed in your Gmail account.

Sorry, Michael Arrington, I'm now letting Google profit from TechCrunch since I subscribed using your FeedBurner email tool. It's nice...I never even have to visit the TechCrunch site and see ads, etc. Full content feeds show up in my Gmail with targeted ads that make money for Google--not TechCrunch. Of course, Michael's added his own embedded ads in the feed, but they have to compete with Google. It makes Feedpass look pretty harmless by comparison.

So, while we are working on more effective ways to claim your feed/blog/content, we still believe that the opt-in for AdSense credit is the only way we can do it, unless AdSense ID's were automatically embedded in RSS feeds as a standard. And for opt-out, we don't think that our use of the content is unfair or pulls people away from the actual sites. So, while we may still honor requests from publishers to be blocked, we are also considering removing blocks and opening up full access. If we do it, the you'll once again be able to make Feedpass pages for sites like TechCrunch.

The explosive growth that we've experienced proves to us that many users find our service to be quite valuable. Those that have actually looked at it have essentially stopped complaining about the way the content is used and seem to recognize the value.

Jim

Posted at 2:51AM on Jun 10th 2006 by Jim