The RSS Blog

News and commentary from the RSS and OPML community.

This weekend we saw the blogosphere mob go after Feedpass. The issue started over on the The Social Software Weblog, where Marshall Kirkpatrick raised a concern about Feedpass. Then Michael Arrington posted it on TechCrunch where he turned that concern into Feedpass Does Absolutely Nothing. That's quite a jump. But worse, it was obvious reading the article that Michael was slamming Feedpass only to get favor with a new competitor that was releasing this week. Then Dave Winer jumps on the bandwagon and says Feedpass does more than nothing, basically saying that Feedpass is hijacking your RSS feed. Again, more talk without using the brain. Feedpass is a landing page and doesn't replace your RSS feed. Wake up Dave. And Dave basically begs this new company releasing later this week to work with him. You see now that people are posting in the dark about Feedpass, misinterpreting in the worse way everybody who blogged previously. You should all be ashamed.

This morning, things get even worse, Mark Evans posts on Alec Saunders's blog that Feedpass is FeedBurner (see correction below in update II). Mark, should know to check his facts, he's a long time reporter for a major Toronto newspaper. And Mark re-iterates another lie on his own blog, Feedpass does absolutely nothing. What a blogosphere pile-on. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Behaving like school children picking on the new kid.

What is this about? It's about the fact that Feedpass could be used by malicious people to make money off another persons feed. Nobody is saying that that has happened, only that the possibility exists. It's all about protectionism, one of the corner stones that built the blogosphere. The blogosphere was built on nay-saying the protectionist aspect of the current media. In full circle, the blogosphere has in turn become that protectionist media. So you can all add hypocrite to the shame I see in you.

Somehow, Technorati was built upon taking your feed and adding ads. But now that you're big-shots, NO MORE companies get a free ride off your feed. Take a look at this page.

http://www.technorati.com/blogs/www.kbcafe.com/rss

It's Technorati taking my feed and putting ads on it. Technorati is doing nothing wrong, so why is Feedpass doing something wrong by giving that ability to just everybody? Why? Because if you went after Technorati you'd get eaten up, but if you go after some small guy, then you feel big about yourself.

But the worse part is the why. You know why Alec and Mark posted this stuff? It's the blogosphere BOGU. Praise everything Michael says and maybe next week he'll link to me. Try thinking instead of just repeating what Michael says.

Update: I've also noticed that Jim Woolley, the guy behind Feedpass is trying desparately to change his service to meet the requirements of the mob. He added a step to validate your blog, which no longer makes it usable by non-geeks.

Update II: Mark said that his use of FeedBurner was a typo and that he meant Feedpass, that he didn't mean to associate them.

Reader Comments Subscribe

C'mon guys... this isn't about going after the little guy.  The premise behind FeedPass is busted.  Technorati's premise is that it can help you find similar content to the content you're reading.  Google's is that they can search the web.  Feedpass is...? We can help others monetize your work?  How does FeedPass help spread my content to others?  It doesn't have any kind of a search capability.  It doesn't help make my feed more discoverable. 

I applaud the FeedPass guys for trying to get to market quickly with a tool to monetize feeds.  I think the approach is wrong.   Give me a way to embed Google ads in my RSS under my control and you'll have a friend for life. 

Jim
There's nothing wrong with Feedpass. There's nothing wrong with FeedBurner either. You just did to FeedBurner what the blogosphere has been doing to you.

anonymous,
The premise of Feedpass is to help you subscribe. It does make your feed more discoverable.

Randy
Oh sorry, this is Marshall Kirkpatrick that posted that last comment.

Marshall, I agree, your comments were great. You said 'hey look at this neat thing and btw, I see a flaw in here'. That's acceptable and I commend you on it and I don't put you in the blogosphere mob that is unethically badgering Feedpass. Thank you very much for being a voice of sanity,

Randy
As a show of support, I just claimed my feed and the feed for my comments, and placed links to the feedpass pages for both on my blog (chipsquips.com)

Sterling Camden
Thanks Sterling, it's good to see some people supporting Feedpass, rather than bashing it.
Thanks again,

Randy
I thought and think FeedPass is a neat service. I understand what it does. Congratulations. Not sure why everyone is on their high horses about it - but I do think that TechCrunch has jumped the shark recently.
Ivan
blog.snipperoo.com
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