The raves are coming in, the community likes the weekly social networking digest I put out every Wednesday. What is it? A fast summary of what you need to know about the space. Here’s all the recent ones. Organized, prioritized and succinct it delivers the details of this industry that you may need to know about…and what I’m covering as an analyst. If you’re working at a company in this space, this is a good way to get into my head and poke around.

If you’re a mediasnacker, and just want this weekly digest without the rest of my blog, (although I wish you’d subscribe to the whole thing, I realize it’s a lot to consume for the busy person)

Thank Amyloo for the feed URL, she let me know that one of the default features (a hidden easter egg, really) is that wonderful Wordpress can provide a feed for ANY category or tag. How? you just add “feed” at the end of the URL of the page that renders all the tags/categories.

What’s another way to get snackbytes from me? you can find me on Twitter (I’ll add you back), which has become a chat room, and I often link out to what I’m reading in near-real time with commentary. Don’t like Twitter? you may side with David, who I just had this podcast debate with.

Communication on the web is getting faster, smaller, more distributed, and mobile.

Ted Tom Conrad of Pandora (a website I’m a big fan of and needs our support right now) told me today at the CommunityNext conference here in Sunnyvale that I’m one of the people he feels he knows really well because of how much I share on Twitter. I could be considered a spammer, but he can unsubscribe anytime he wants, so I’m not worried about it.

Lane Becker (who’s launching Get Satisfaction) told me that he’s subscribed to my shared feed but not my blog feed, I suggested the content may be better than my blog feed.

Here’s a few ways you can subscribe to Web Strategy:

My blog feed

My Shared Feed XML or Shared Feed HTML (I’ll suggest recommended reading from my Google Reader)

My Twitter

My Facebook (If you add me, I’ll reciprocate, as long as you’re not being devious, or search for me “Jeremiah Owyang”)

Web Strategy Video Show: I interview web decision makers

Why do I use all these tools? Partly it’s R&D so my clients will know how to use these tools, I try to make mistakes so they don’t ahve to.

This is one of my all time favorite video blogs, at first, I was worried this would be just a series of one-offs, but Lee has created a handful of “web in plain English” videos called the Common Craft Show. There’s something to say about an expert who can communicate to anyone. Update: Lee has thanked his fan base, and I’m at the top of the list.

Really easy to understand, very succinct, and very helpful. If only consultants and lawyers could speak so clearly.

Below: Three videos, if you’re reading from a feedreader or email and don’t see them, view this post in a browser.

Social media in plain English, great starter video. Update: now the videos can be seen in many languages

Understanding Blogs

Click To Play

Above: Understanding Social Networks

Click To Play

Above: Understanding Wikis

Click To Play

Above: Understanding RSS

Click To Play

Above: Understanding Social Bookmarking

Click To Play

Above: Understanding Google Docs

Above: Using WetPaint

Click To Play

Above: PR Web, the social press release

What other topics could they do next? APIs, Blogs, Mashups, Identity, Podcasts, Facebook, Video Stremaing, and Media!

If you get caught up in a feedreader for hours a day, and are getting distracted a work, I recommend that you subscribe to my colleague Robert Scoble’s link blog. He subscribes to hundreds of feeds and filters through all the junk every day and then shares them using Google Reader which he calls his link blog –you should subscribe. In fact the google reader team confirmed he consumes the most feeds on the entire planet of google reader users.

Why? You can subscribe to this shared link blog, and save yourself time. A lot of these pieces are the highlights of the day, and the fact that he is sharing these are ‘gestures’ that carry nearly as much weight as a link. Of course, I also show up in his shared feeds #23 this month, but if you’re already reading my blog you’ll just get a double dose. He also suggested that some are getting more traffic from this shared link feed.

Tim Ferriss, author of the best selling book the Four hour work week, interviewed Scoble to figure out how he consumes so many feeds. Robert and I don’t always agree, we had a civil discussion about the future of corporate websites, while I feel they will share the voice of the customer, he suggested that’s the wrong direction, marketing is shifting completely off to blogs –I saw it’s an “and”. We’ll see.

In any case, it’s a privilege working with Robert, I get asked a lot “what’s it like working with Scoble”. I always say, he’s one of the hardest working people in the tech industry I’ve ever met, it’s true…he never stops.

Portals are Dead. Portals are Dead. = the mantra of Web 2.0, content is distributed, open, and amorphous.

The Web Portal, which gained fame in the late 1990s was a web application that was intended to keep eyeballs on one page by providing all the information in a dashboard type style at once. From 2000-2003 I was the UI designer on the MyExodus customer portal, it was a lot of fun.

An Aggregator, like a feedreader, techmeme, page flakes, netvibes, and myyahoo (and now facebook) is designed to collect all the information you want on to one page. If you think about it for a moment, Google search results is actually an aggregator too.

So what’s the difference between a Portal and an Aggreagtor? Not much, if you ask me. So if portals are dead, then are aggregators too? While sure, the resources required to create the modern portal/aggregator or low, the strategy is the same: bring all the resources to one page.

Conclusion: Portals aren’t dead, we’ve just renamed ‘em.

I’m pleased to see that Adobe has moved closer to creating internet applications in addition to their amazing web suites. myFeedz was launched and is a filter. Yahoo launched their filter called Pipes a few weeks ago, (as I remember the antiquated myYahoo) which I’m starting to see a few examples emerge here and there, such as this interesting feed of Upcoming events of a trusted network

I'm not going to join either Pipes or MyFeedz until I start hearing more voices in my trusted network having success with it (that's my trick by the way, I'm a second generation adopter with new technology, I let the first adopters try it out).

I'm curious however, aside from the interesting interface and tagcloud, what's the strategic benefit of myFeedz? I can do a keyword query in bloglines by IAC, what benefit does myFeedz offer in addition to that?

I use Google Reader most of the time, (you can see my shared feed) and see a tremendous amount of opportunity, which I’m sure the Reader team is already working on.

Here’s my ultimate reader:

I enjoy the Google Reader interface, the hotkeys make it easy to scream through content (Scoble taught me some tricks) , keep the sharing ability.

Quantify and highlight multiple entries and keywords: Sometimes I see duplicate items come through my feedreader, those items should be somehow indicated they are ‘hot’

Intelligently look for other feeds that show similar characteristics from my trusted network (that may be hard to figure out)

Intelligently learn how to filter out the junk, look for patterns

Never show ads, even if embedded in the posts.

If your website at your company doesn’t have Syndicated feeds on your website, please send this to your web team, I’m here to help.

What you should know about Syndicated Feeds for your Corporate Website
Yesterday, a respected PR professional asked me some excellent questions on Syndication deployment, usage, and tactics. Given her background is not web, this is an excellent question, and I’m glad she asked. This post is intended as a basic primer, and I’m going to avoid any technical discussions. As you hopefully know, I use this blog to answer questions that I get from prospects, customers, friends, and family about the web.

Syndicated feeds such as RSS, and Atom and other feeds are becoming increasingly popular primarily due to the blogging explosion, (Syndicated content is a default feature of nearly every blog) and is starting to take hold on non-blog sites as well.

How it works
Websites, blogs, and other tools offer syndicated feeds. Users can tell it’s available on the page as there are icons on the webpage, and some browsers indicate this (see orange icon on browser). Users can then subscribe to the feed from a feedreader or from their subscribe feeds section on the browser. This let’s the user be alerted when there is information changed on the website, and they can consume the content when they want, and how they want.

Why it matters
I already discussed how Web Marketing is not on two domains only (your website and google search results) the modern web marketer needs to start building the resources for users now that the information power is starting to shift to the users.

Adoption levels for those that are actively using a feedreader, but the adoption trend will continue to grow. Since the next version of Outlook (a staple of many corporations) it will have a built in feedreader in the Inbox. Feedreaders will be mainstream just like email, so please start your planning now.

You want your users to subscribe to your content, this means they are signaling they want more content, and an indicator they are a highly relevant, targeted audience, don’t let them down!

While at Microsoft, tech blogger Robert Scoble proclaimed some very strong remarks for Web Marketers that don’t have RSS on their site.

Modern Web Marketing is giving to users
If you run a website for a company or organization, I would encourage you to deploy an syndicated feed program for your site, it will give the visitors of your site the opportunity to subscribe (only if they want to) to your content so they can consume it when and how they please. In marketing, this is an opt-in model. For this to be effective you’ll want to keep the feeds updated.

Examples
The tech industry is often the testbed for adopting new technologies, and there are many companies that have RSS right on their homepage. You can see a prominent RSS icon on the Hitachi Data Systems site, and PodTech has quite a few.

RSS Strategies for your Corporate Content
Take a look at IBM, which has deployed RSS in a very advanced way, they’re providing a feed for what appears to be every product and offering in the entire company. Since different users have different needs, segmenting will provide a higher degree of relevancy and accuracy for the subscriber. It’s even broken down by language.

It makes sense to segment your content and cut it as many ways as possible, look for content that is frequently updated such as press releases, updated collateral, white papers, and even your email newsletter. Since it’s native to podcasts, blogs, and other social media tools, be sure to put all of these on one page, making it easy for users to select from the ‘menu’

Don’t have RSS on your Corporate Site?
It’s not hard to implement this, you can use a free blog (go to wordpress) and create this account. Then you can send the feed into feedburner which will provide you with metrics. Add the RSS icon to your homepage, and then populate the blog with updated content: news, new media, or to be as so bold as to blog. If you’re more technical, you can find an RSS generator which could be a way to deploy everytime your website updates. I’m sure all of the above recommendations are free, time and a bit of know how is all that is needed.

Costs
Deploying RSS on your corporate website, (say maybe one feed) should cost no dollars, it should primarily be labor, consult your developers for more details. Many of the tools I’ve suggested have zero dollar cost. Since content is already updated on your site (news, press, new collateral, etc) you don’t have to create new content, just use this as a vehicle for extended reach.

Getting Started
1) Get educated, I’ve provided some links below
2) Get a feedreader, There’s a ton here, I happen to use Google Reader, and have also used Google Homepage, MyYahoo, and Bloglines. My feedreader saves me time.
3) Subscribe to some feeds (start with mine)
4) Create RSS for your own site, test it out
5) Grow: Segment content, find better tools, make it part of your integrated marketing approach

What’s Next
I expect CMS systems in this year to be offering a wide multitude of RSS output features, and even create engines that allow users to create their own customized feed.

I also recommend you consider offering RSS on your site, as there are ’scraping’ technologies appearing that will take your content off your site and convert into RSS, even if you don’t want it to. This may not be ideal for you, as the content that it’s scraping may not what you want to serve up to your highly relevant audience. A way to subscribe to content will eventually be on every single webpage whether the creator likes it or not.

Learn More
If you want to know more about RSS, (and want to first impress your IT guys how much you already know) I first recommend you check out Robyn Tippin’s RSS Marketing Blog, there are a ton of great resources, you can check out Wikipedia’s collection. Or see this google results page on RSS Marketing. Last but not least, we should all recognize the most major contributor to RSS is Internet Uncle, Dave Winer, learn up on him at Wikipedia, then see other resources. If anyone else has any other suggestions, please leave a comment.

If you’ve never subscribed to a website before, start by subscribing to mine!

I noticed a trend in several RSS articles and posts being published, I’ve collected a few of the more helpful ones, including the primer from Wikipedia up front. Feel free to leave comments with additional resources.

Primer: Wikipedia on RSS
Don’t know what RSS is? As a Marketer, Web Professional, or communicator, being knowledgeable about RSS is important in this current web era.

RSS for the People
Although I’ve always thought the BBC version of explaining RSS was classic, this version explained by Paul Kim leverages what the LA Fire department has figured out. It’s truly a pro-consumer point of view.

Who’s using what for RSS
Analysis of which feedreaders are being used and usage of RSS. It doesn’t answer “who” is using RSS, but research this time last year from Yahoo suggested that it tended to be younger technology folks. No surprised there.

42 uses of RSS and Atom Feeds
Really Simple Syndication is a protocol, a vehicle, and a tool that can be used to meet a variety of purposes. This brain stormer gives some practical applications of using RSS and the applications currently avaialble. My suggestion: create a feedreader on your enterprise Intranet to assist with creating customized homepages.

RSS Subscription for Podcasts low
A few days ago I covered that podcast subscription may be low, but it’s quickly growing according to Pew internet research

RSS finally taking off, thanks to IE7 and Firefox?
Now that both dominant browsers (IE is massively the lead) and Firefox both offer feedreader abilities, not to mention most web mail and the future Outlook12 will this be the tools needed to take RSS mainstream?

Oh, one other confusing thing: I hear people describing RSS as a Push, and a Pull medium, in your opinion, which is it?

Martin and I are invited to the IE7 release event next week in San Francisco. Like last time at the beta release event, we interviewed and did a podcast with the product team.

I’ve already asked several web experts to give me their questions they would want me to ask the team, (could range from IT deployment, security, user experience, standards, css, features, feeds, market share, whatever) if you’ve any specific questions, please leave a comment.

I wonder if IE7s use of feeds could replace feedreaders for common users. The tabbed feature should improve productivity. If the browser has a fully functioning ‘tagging’ feature this could be helpful within the enterprise or personal bookmarking.

More news about the release from Kevin Dean. By the way, I love the fact that Microsoft is reaching to the web and blog community for a product release. Smart, very smart.

I’ve noticed some blogs that have skyrocketed recently with subscriptions, and I’ve got to ask the question: Is it possible to make one’s feedburner numbers go up by subscribing to it multiple times from one’s feedreader? Is it possible to write a script to do this?

Heh, I’m not planning to do this, but I’ve noticed some unnatural growth, and wondered if feedburner had a way of determining feed subscription source (maybe IP) and would/could limit it’s analytics.

The marketing benefits from being able to manipulate one’s feedburner ranks (everyone’s reading it, why shouldn’t you) is a very powerful message.

I’m not a developer or software engineer.

I am an individual that needs to understand technology in order to impelement web strategies –consider the following as a public learning experience.

I first heard Marc Canter talking about Microformats a few months ago, and talked to Tantek about it at dinner –I didn’t understand it fully at the time, I’m beginning to see the value now that so many voices are appearing on the web due to blogs and social media.

I am NOT a microformat expert, if you have a suggestion or correction, please leave a comment below and I’ll update the text –let’s learn together.

Q: What are Microformats?
A new method to organize unstructured information into an organized fashion that could be used universally. Edit: You can learn more about the “Big Picture on Microformats” from John Allsopp.
Q: I’m not technical, Why should I know about Microformats?
While still in it’s very early stages, this could be a protocol that could further define RSS or make information publishing, categorizing, or managing more effective. Marketers could benefit by quickly publishing information in organized methods, consumers could quickly obtain information in organized fashions.

Q: Why Microformats?
Social Media (blogs, forums, wikis, etc) are exploding; so many voices, reviews, thoughts, and memes are being spread through the internet, a method to identify, collect, organize, and repurpose/manage will be a service to the world. So much information, very little structure.

Q: How do they work?
Since it’s not a new language, it can be embedded in HTML (as I understand it from Wikipedia) I believe that RSS can also contain the information which will be great if you need to get the word out or update information quickly. Think Vitamin has published a nifty article on embedding Microformats in HTML.

Q: What are the Benefits?
Here’s some potential benefits that come to my mind. (and this is before coffee)

• Quickly find all user reviews about a product across the internet. (Imagine how powerful that becomes if you can do this from a mobile device before buying a product)
• Quickly update all your contact information as it appears across the entire internet
• Quickly tell the whole world about an event and have it updated on every calendar
• Search engines can do a better job of indexing and serving more accurate information
• Quickly put up a product to sell that would publish on many websites (ebay, Craigslist, etc)
• Quickly tell the world when this price has changed or if the product is off the market (sold)
• Build a universal library of all food recipes and share you own, transmit this code to your local supermarket to assemble ingredients before you arrive, or ship
• Tie your disparate intranet system using RSS and Microformats as the new protocol
• Quickly create a press release and send to social media tools
• Quickly create an image/video and publish to be shared in other social media tools
• Create your own Microformat (like HCard, or HCalendar) for your own use (see wiki)

Q: What are the Challenges?

• Adoption
• Blog publishing tools or widgets will need to be added
• All websites that want to stay relevant will need to ‘open up’ to opensource and opendata model
• Folks inputting faulty data into Microformat structure

Q: Are Microformats related to RSS?
Yes, I believe that the Microformat content can be distributed via RSS just like other content.

Interact with this post
Have a question? Leave a comment
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I’ll share the findings with the Microformats team later…

At the Syndicate conference in SF last Winter, (Day 1 notes, Day 2 notes) I learned that the adoption rate for feeds is in the 30ish% (The exact stats are slipping me) and the trend was on a growth pattern.

Julio observes how strange it is for companies not to offer webfeeds. Strange that companies wouldn’t try to provide the information that consumers want. I’ve heard of HTML to RSS scrapers that will convert content to RSS anyways –you can’t stop it.

Remember that nearly every modern browser will pull in feeds, even webmail accounts are showing feeds, and the next version of Outlook 12 will have a feedreader built right into it.

Perhaps a couple of reasons why companies don’t offer feeds:

• Awareness is low on Syndication and RSS
• Lack of time and knowledge to provide or implement RSS content
• Lack of understanding that the consumers are taking charge of information consumption, those who offer content in a way consumers want will bring customers closer.
• Some companies may intentionally not be offering feeds, as they want eyeballs on their site, perhaps for advertising revenue. It will be interesting to see how the advertising model shifts as content consumption goes to a pull from push model, and then how marketers will respond (and they always do)

Robert Scoble said the following at Microsoft, if I remember correctly, several folks wanted him fired after he wrote this: No RSS? No downloads? No interaction? Fake content? You’re fired! (how come comments are not visible?)

If you want to learn more about RSS, check out what my friend Robyn Tippins and friends are doing at RSS Applied. Have you ever seen so many RSS icons? Speaking of feeds, if you havent’ done so already, Subscribe to my feed.