But when I blogged about the ways to find top law blogs in your niche I mentioned that Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb found Ask.com Blog Search, powered by Bloglines, which Ask.com acquired, to have the best blog search on the net.

And when I noticed that an RSS feed from Google Blog Search on 'ABA TechShow' was not pulling in all the blog posts referencing 'ABA TechShow,' I gave Ask.com Blog Search a try. Ask.com picked up more blogs posts referencing 'ABA TechShow' than Google Blog Search.

Give Ask.com Blog Search a try. You can subscribe to a search at either the Bloglines site or the Ask.com site (click Blogs, as opposed to Web). Same search engine is powering both.

Let me know what you find. Does Ask.com Blog Search provide better results for you than Google Blog Search?

Rick, who since FeedBurner's sale to Google has been a part of Google's content acquisition team, answered a few questions via e-mail last week about his views on RSS, the role the Internet has played on the 2008 presidential campaign trail and more.

1. Rob La Gatta: Do you remember when you were first exposed to RSS? What were your impressions of it at the time, and where did you expect it to go?

Rick Klau: I started a blog in December of 2001. Radio Userland (the product I used at the time) had an aggregator built in, and I started realizing that the ability to subscribe to sites I liked was fundamentally changing how I used the web. I was more consistently informed on subjects I cared about, and spent less time looking for information that mattered. Best of all, I was building relationships with people I hadn't met - based on the strength of their writing and our shared interests.

I don't think I gave it a lot of thought to try and actually predict where it would end up, but I do recall telling friends that RSS felt as significant to me as the browser felt when I first used Mosaic.

2. Rob La Gatta: In your opinion, has the world - and by that I mean the general, news-reading public - embraced RSS technology to the extent you would have expected when you started at FeedBurner?

Rick Klau: Absolutely.

Watching the growth curve of audience adoption was a very gratifying part of my time at FeedBurner. When I joined, aggregate subscribers to all the feeds we managed was measured in tens of thousands. Today that number is close to 100 million.

Perhaps best of all, many people who have "embraced" RSS have done so without really recognizing it. They just add headlines to iGoogle, or have their favorite blogs e-mailed to them, using FeedBurner's feed-to-e-mail service...they don't know that they're "using" RSS, and they shouldn't have to. (How many people using e-mail know that they're using SMTP or POP3? Not many, and that's how it should be.)

3. Rob La Gatta: What about the professional community: do you believe that businesses are utilizing RSS and blogging as much as they could/should be?

Rick Klau: There's always room for improvement. The last time I looked at a number of law firm websites, few were distributing information to clients via RSS. With the mass-market adoption of RSS and the ease with which firms can produce RSS feeds, they should see this as a simple way to embrace a convenient medium that gets them closer to their clients. Whether that's to distribute client alerts, podcasts (great for clients who commute!) or to summarize interesting and useful info found on the web, law firms can greatly increase their influence by embracing this medium.

4. Rob La Gatta: I saw you wrote about the Obama Facebook application, which is in many ways indicative of the way politics has taken on a new face for the digital age. How important do you see Internet-based tools in determining the outcome of the 2008 election?

Rick Klau: I'm not sure we're at the point where we can say conclusively that Internet-based tools are determining the outcome of the 2008 election. What they are doing is ensuring that more people can participate in the process - as volunteers, donors and even advisors. Savvy candidates are using the tools to more effectively organize their volunteers and leverage their input, which means that the tools are making the volunteers more effective.

Ultimately, the candidate still has to be able to sell people on their ideas. I was very involved in the Dean campaign, and watched as MeetUp and blogs emerged as tools that connected supporters offline as well as online. In this cycle, Facebook and even the campaign's own sites (my.barackobama.com is spectacular in this regard) are going further, giving me the ability to organize my precinct, recruit volunteers, and reach out to other voters by phone or by knocking on doors.

Back to your question - I don't think we want the technology to determine the outcome of the election. But if we can get more people involved and active in the process, we'll get the government we deserve. And that will be a good outcome all around. Particularly if Barack wins. :)

5. Rob La Gatta: Your blog is very personal. You have a disclaimer present, but some might still argue that you're walking a fine line (as we've all read about professionals whose personal blogs came back to bite them).

Do you have any concerns that being so personal out in the open could impact your professional reputation? Or do you think that developing a personality and a voice that people come to know - as you've done with your blog - is necessary for business professionals today?

Rick Klau: I've never worried that my blog would negatively impact my professional reputation, because what I write on the blog is what I say to friends, family members and co-workers. Writing on the blog is how I think, how I refine my opinions and how I challenge assumptions. I don't hide my personal opinions, but I also see the blog as a place to think out loud. It's not an outlet to take aim at others, and I don't think I've ever said something I'd be embarrassed by if a co-worker, competitor or friend were to read it.

Without any qualifications, the blog has had a dramatic, positive impact on my career. It's led directly to my last two jobs. Once I landed at Google, I met several senior people here who knew me because they'd read my blog in the past. It's produced speaking invitations at conferences as far away as Prague, resulted in inclusion in a number of high profile news publications, and opened doors with political campaigns where I've chosen to get involved. (It even got me a mention in Joe Trippi's book about the Dean campaign!) I've reconnected with classmates from high school, college and law school, and I've developed strong friendships with people I've never met personally - yet we exchange Christmas cards and chat frequently.

Do I have any concerns? Sure. I'm particularly sensitive to the fact that I'm now at Google, so I'm careful not to venture into territory where it might look like I'm speaking on behalf of Google. I stick to what I know, try to exercise common sense, and enjoy the process of writing about what I feel strongly about.

You talk about situations where a personal blog has come back to bite them - in most cases I've seen, that's been where the personal blog hasn't matched the professional appearance and it's caused embarrassment (or worse). My blog, as I mentioned above, *is* me. So far, it's working out pretty well.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Dan Harris, Seattle international law lawyer & publisher of the China Law Blog [1.28.08]
• Daniel Schuman of the American Constitution Society's ACS Blog [1.25.08]
• Tim Titolo, Las Vegas personal injury lawyer & publisher of the Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog [1.24.08]
• Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law professor & founder of The Volokh Conspiracy [1.23.08]
• Dan Clement, New York family law attorney & publisher of the New York Divorce Report [1.22.08]

He's hooking up with the New York Times DealBook as the Deal Professor. Steven says not to worry.

...[I]t will be the same blog covering the same topics with the same length of posts and legal analysis, just with the expanded resources of those great N.Y. Times deal reporters, including Andrew Ross Sorkin and Michael de la Merced.

Expect more lawyers to become bloggers for major publications and news websites. Lawyers are killer reporters and commentators on niche legal subjects. And who's got more domain expertise?

Plus, with declining circulation of hard copy newspapers and increasing online readership, newspaper revenues are in decline. Though online revenues are on the rise, they can't match the loss of hard copy advertising and subscription revenues. As a result, newspapers and media centers are on the look out for syndicated content from good bloggers.

Golden opportunity for you law bloggers. Whether it be with national mass media, national trade media, or local/regional newspapers.

And you don't have to wait for the publications to contact you. Get to know the reporters and editors at publications for which you would like to blog. How? Comment on their stories and blog posts. Right on their news sites and and in your own blog. Send them an email from time to time. Connect with them on LinkedIn.

If you don't get asked to blog for the publication, ask them. Propose that they add a blog and that you write it.

Others following this news

• Merger blogger merges with the NYT from Larry Ribstein
• Law Professors, Blogging and The New York Times -- and Delaware Corporate Law from Franicis Pileggi
• Kudos to the NY Times' "Deal Professor" from Paul Caron
• CNET-Jana: The Legal Road Ahead from Joseph Weisenthal of paidContent.org
• Weblogs and Networking: M & A Law Prof Moves to NYTimes from Bill Gratsch
• The Deal Professor from Matt Bodie
• Law Prof Blogger Moves to the New York Times from Carolyn Elefant
• Law Professor Blogger Gets A Gig As A New York Times Blogger from Mitchell Rubinstein
• Steven Davidoff: From Law Professor Blogs Network to New York Times from Joe Hodnicki

...Yahoo Pipes is a service from Yahoo which enables you to take inputs from RSS feeds and other XML etc files, manipulate them (eg sort, filter, truncate etc) and then output the result as an RSS feed or other format - all using a neat drag and drop interface.

So, in this case, the FamilyLawPipe takes 13 family law blog feeds, sorts their entries by date and outputs the latest 50 to a single feed.

After early fanfare, YahooPipes hasn't taken off like folks thought it would. But what Nick's done is a nice idea and something lawyers here in the States ought to pick up on. Being a mini ticker-tape on a niche subject via feeds is not only a nice resource for others, but lets others know of your expertise and commitment by virtue of you following the subject.

Other blog posts on this story

• Yahoo Pipes and RSS mixing from Steve Matthews
• Feed Pipe from John Bolch

Companies are adding positions like community manager, new media strategist or blog strategist, to analyze what is being said and engage in conversations so as to protect and advance a company's image or products.

Very, very few law firms are following the lead. Law firms unfortunately spend more time discussing the design of upcoming static web sites or the branding of their law firm via a pet bulldog than taking advantage of the latest marketing technology.

Law firms ought to have systems in place to listen to what is being said on the Web about, among other things, the following:

• Lawyers' names
• Firm name
• Clients' names
• Prospective client names
• Key products or services of clients and prospects
• Expert witness names
• Names of cases the firm is involved
• Relevant case, code, and regulatory law

Law firms also ought to be engaged in Internet discussion in areas of the law in which the firm is looking to grow their businesses. Not through FaceBook, chats, message boards and the like. But through focused blogs. A blog is your mouth. Without a blog it's impossible to engage in this discussion.

Personally, I'm only aware of one law firm, Steve Matthews' former firm of Clark Wilson, which deploys an organized system for listening to Internet discussion. Hearing Steve explain the firm's practice of monitoring strategic RSS feeds and distributing them to lawyers made it all seem so obvious and easy. Made you wonder why more law firms don't do the same.

As knowledge management, library, and marketing professionals employed by law firms, you need to learn the art of listening to Internet discussion. Lawyers as well. Thomson West and LexisNexis have no services in place or in the works, that I know of, to provide you access to the discussion. The fortunate thing is it's easy and cost effective to do.

Subscribing to RSS feeds of blogs and keywords/key phrases via a free (Google Reader) or low cost newsreaders is a snap. Ask friends or co-employees. Ask a blogger. Heck, if you want, call or email , and I'll take 20 or 30 minutes to walk you through a webex.

Learn this stuff and you may not only be creating a new position for yourself, but creating more job security.

Among other things, Robin, with illustrations and videos, walks you through:

• An RSS overview - giving you the basic facts about RSS.
• Why RSS? - some reasons that you might find RSS useful in your everyday use of the web.
• Where to find RSS on a website and how you can subscribe to the content you enjoy most.
• The types of content that RSS can bring to your desktop or online "aggregator."
• How to gather your RSS feeds using a Feed Reader or Podcatcher.
Creating News Radars and Linkblogs - how you can use RSS to gather content from all over the web and create hand-picked news radars of content as a resource for your site visitors.
• Creating an "ego radar", a way of monitoring what people are saying about you and your content all over the web.
• Creating a lifestream - an aggregated collection of your online publishing, from Flickr photos, to blog posts, YouTube videos and Twitter tweets.
• Creating your own RSS feed - a simple way to make sure that people can syndicate and subscribe to your content.
• Submitting your feed to RSS directories - how you can maximize your web exposure by making use of the huge list of RSS directories gathered together by Robin Good.
• Feed scraping - how you can turn any website content into an RSS feed, even if it doesn't supply a feed of its own.
• Filtering, merging and refining RSS feeds - how you can refine the information you receive from an RSS feed to suit your exact needs.

If you're not a regular user of RSS already, read Robin's full post. It's a good one.

My typical response is don't worry about. I just emailed a client tonight:

I would not worry about Technorati. I don't watch my Technorati ranking at all and advise clients to do the same. It would be a vanity contest - assuming that Technorat's servers and systems were even up to indexing all blog content and the incoming links to blogs. With the failures of their systems their rankings mean little, if anything.

What is a "Technorati Ranking?" (per Technorati site)

A Technorati Ranking relates to the number of sources that point to a particular weblog relative to other weblogs. The more sources referencing a weblog, the higher the Technorati ranking. The Technorati Ranking for a blog is displaying in URL Search results, Blog search results, and is displayed in the account profile.

To me that says nothing more than we've created a vanity contest that will cause vain people (many bloggers) to return to Technorati as they try in vain to increase their blog ranking. Maybe we can even get people to post their ranking with our Technorati logo as a badge on their blog. Sounds like Web 2.0. ;)

Having an obligation to clients to find out if I'm right, I looked at what others were saying about Technorati rankings.

From Darren Rowse at Pro Blogger, one of the highest ranked blogs by Technorati, discussing his top 100 ranking:

Does it Increase Profile?

...I'm afraid to say that I'm not aware of any circumstance where any reporter or advertiser approached me as a result of seeing me as #3 on the Most Favorited list.

Does it give Egos a Boost?

It's always nice to be included in a list and to be in the company of blogs like others featured in the list.

However it's a somewhat empty achievement to be honest. While I appreciate my readers going to the trouble of marking me a favorite - it's a list that I suspect will always be skewed in favor of blogs about blogging, web 2.0 and the web because it's on a site whose users are largely bloggers who are more inclined to read such blogs.

Does the Technorati Top 100 Most Favorited Blog List Drive Traffic?

So does being #3 on this list drive thousands of visitors to ProBlogger?

A quick visit to my stats packages shows that in the scheme of things it's hardly caused a blip on my traffic radar. Technorati does drive a few hundred readers per month to this blog - but not a single visitor came directly from that the Top 100 Favorites page.

From Wordpress' Matt Mullenweg in a blog comment:

Personally I think it's silly to get worked up over a made-up ranking on a site full of spam that drives very little traffic, especially if you're not in the top 100.

And finally from Steve Rubel in an audio interview where interviewer Andy Plesser mentioned being depressed by his low Technorati ranking:

You get depressed about your Technorati - (Laughs)

Well, you know, I really don't try to think a lot about Technorati rankings because I think it's just, you know, if you - again, if you're providing, you know, high value content that people want, it doesn't matter how many links you're getting. It doesn't matter. As long as you're fulfilling the wishes of your audience. And I think that's what you have to look at above and beyond everything and if you're doing that and doing that consistently, you know, you will get links and accolades. But if you're - if you're doing it just for that, it's the wrong reason. So I, you know, try not to pay attention to that and just really do - just put out there a good product that people want.

After this research, my opinions are stronger than ever. Any of you guys see value in a Technorati ranking?

Update from Steve Rubel's tweet of this post: 'General consensus from replies is that people don't use T'Rati anymore. It's not their fault. The web world simply changed.'

Doing a search for Martindale-Hubbell this morning, the first four results displayed are from legal blogs not affiliated with ALM in anyway. It was not until the fourth result did I find an ALM published piece.

What's the significance?

• ALM, a traditional legal publisher (National Law Journal and 34 other national and regional legal periodicals), is recognizing the importance of legal content published by bloggers.
• ALM recognizing that legal blogs, other than those selected by ALM's Law.com Blog Network, are of equal or greater importance than those in this network which the unknowing have labeled the best legal blogs.
• Legal research of a legal index that did not include legal blogs would be incomplete.
• Lawyers may self-publish via a blog without submitting articles to legal publications. Their content will be seen along side content published by legal periodicals.
• ALM, and its owner Incisive Media, recognizing that user generated content may be as important as their own content in the well being of their publications.
• Law.com could become a legal information center with more content produced by practicing lawyers, law professors, and law students than ALM's own reporters and editors.

Still some important features missing, such as the ability to subscribe to search results by RSS, but this is a good start for blogs at ALM.

If Technorati does not correct the problem fast, it's going to be their demise - if Google and it's Google Blog Search isn't already accelerating that demise.

Spam blogs are a big problem. Folks like me who subscribe to RSS feeds of searches of keywords and key phrases at Technorati are getting a ton of spam text from these spam blogs in our RSS newsreaders. As bloggers and media professionals we're power users of information. Clean feeds, free of spam, are of critical importance in browsing relevant information and Internet discussion.

Google Blog Search, as opposed to Techonrati, is indexing few, if any of the spam blogs. My RSS feeds of searches from Google Blog Search are clean and free of spam text.

Ironic part is that the vast majority of spam blogs are built on Google's Blogger web based blog publishing platform. Google Blog Search, thriving on the unlimited server capacity, engineering talent, and resources is able to tackle the spam blog problem. Intentional or not, Google is killing off Technorati by sending Technorati's servers more spam than they can handle.

If Technorati does not clean up their index shortly, I am going to unsubscribe to my RSS search feeds at Technorati. Technorati, once an integral part of my life, will become irrelevant. I'm sure I am not the only one who will do so.

That's unfortunate as Technorati was once a wonderful platform driven by some passionate and talented folks.

Looked interesting until I read "When you find a blog you enjoy, it's common to bookmark that page so you can return often and with ease."

Are you nuts? Bookmarking blogs would only be done by someone with a lot of time on their hands. You know, here's a lot of bookmarks on my browser and I spend all day going back to blogs I like to see if they posted anything new. 'Nope, nothing new today, I'll check back tomorrow and now on to the next blog in my bookmarks.'

You subscribe to blogs. You do not bookmark them. When a new post is made to a blog you like, the new post will automatically be streamed to your newsreader where you collect RSS feeds from other blogs, news sites, and keywords & key phrases you follow from Google Blog Search.

The busiest people in this country read blogs. It's not the people with time to kill that browse around to blogs. They read blogs because they can get targeted information fed to them.

It's a search, browse, and subscribe Internet society today folks. We've moved on from the search and browse world.

And more than just a perk for lawyers, as referenced by Above the law, Jason nails the law librarian's role in law firm marketing.

I certainly hope attorneys realize the value librarians bring to their practices. Librarians can assist with legal research, business development and marketing, competitive intelligence, and more services. The best moments I have in my job are when an attorney tells me that I've made them look good in front of a client, and hopefully I do that often.

I'm talking with more and more law librarians and law firm knowledge management folks about professional marketing blogs for their firms. The reason being that these professionals are capturing content on niche areas of the law and distributing it among the appropriate lawyers in the firm. Seeing the value of this intellectual capital not only to lawyers in the firm, but also to clients, prospective clients and influencers of those two groups, law firms are turning to blogs to syndicate this content.

As the New York Times reported awhile back, being a law librarian is hip these days. Especially when you help your law firm grow its business.

Was going to mention to Bay Area commercial lawyers as a way to further enhance their reputations. You know, comment on relevant posts, get to know the reporter, get to know other commenters. Great way to get known for what you do by influencers in the Bay Area.

But the whole set up for this blog is lame. One, I didn't see any RSS feeds. How could one follow posts. Second was pop up ads. Third, and most offensive was that before you could comment you needed to register. Registration required the typical newspaper demographic junk like date of birth, where you live, and your gender.

Newspapers, who are experiencing declining revenues, have a golden opportunity to become more relevant with readership. It's through interacting with bloggers. Bloggers referencing your online newspaper content on their posts and commenting at your blog are going to drive traffic to you.

To take advantage of this opportunity, newspapers cannot set up all walls that say 'we do not want you bloggers, go away.' But that's exactly what newspapers are saying when they set up special 'blog rules of their own,' by having no RSS feeds, pop up ads, and requiring demographic info to comment.

Greg, an early believer in the personalization of news and info, had this to say from his personal blog.

Some day, online newspapers will focus on your interests, building you your own unique, customized front page of news. Some day, search engines will learn from what you do to help you find what you need. Some day, your computer will adapt to your needs to help with the task at hand. Some day, information overload will be tamed.

But not today. Findory will be shutting down on November 1. The website will no longer carry news, blogs, videos, podcasts, or favorites.

With Findory picking up my feeds and LexBlog client feeds for the last few years, I followed the aggregator with great interest. Thought there was good potential for the personalized syndication of law content via Findory. Even hoped there may some way to leverage the technology after Greg announced in January he was going to wind things up.

Greg's been one of the folks here in Seattle whose brain I would love to pick. Greg wrote the recommendation engine used by Amazon.com and later led the software team that developed Amazon's personalization systems. His vision of delivering the information people want from whom they wanted it was ahead of the times. Up for a cup of coffee Greg?

The additional features, per Per Google's Ben Darnell at the Official Google Reader Blog:

• Unread counts and 'mark all as read.'
• Folder-based navigation makes it easier to organize your subscriptions.
• New expanded view lets you quickly scan over several items at once.
• Sharing feeds is easier - with a single click of the 'shared' icon, you can publish an interesting item on your public sharing page for your friends to see.

I played around with my feeds on the new reader this evening. It is more user friendly and what ever the boys did on the tech side, it did speed up my experience as a user.

Speaking to groups I am recommending Google Reader highly. If you aren't using a reader, there isn't an easier one to start with.

Google Reader's help section covering how to subscribe to feeds, how to use the reader, and how to manage your feeds is outstanding. Walking through their screen shots and accompanying explanation can have you using RSS feeds in a couple hours.

The problem as reported by Editor & Publisher:

...[M]any news outlets don't want to share all the news that's on their site--especially stories that are not staff-written or produced. One reason may be that such stories, such as those by AP or Reuters, don't carry the 'brand' of the news organization. But without those stories, many RSS feeds are not truly delivering news 24/7 and, in addition, lack the breadth of news their home sites deliver.

As a result, RSS users have no idea what they're missing. The study illuminated how difficult it was to get even all of the staff-generated stories from 'today' via RSS feeds. And without going back to the home site and checking, a user doesn't know exactly what is NOT being sent via the RSS feeds.

The answer?

• Go to Google News.
• Google News indexes and stores news articles for the past 30 days from about 4,500 sites, including newspapers and trade periodicals.
• Do a search for various sets of keywords and key phrases that you want to stay abreast of.
• Google News will then provide around the first 200 characters of relevant story and links to the full article.
• Do not re-vist Google News to get your updates.
• Do not get email updates of news stories for your searches.
• Get RSS feeds of the various searches so that the stories are delivered to your newsreader.
• If you use Google Reader, click on the link at the bottom of your Google News search results page that says 'Subscribe to a news feed for [keyord/key phrase] in Google Reader;' excerpts for new news stories will then display in your reader.
• If you use another newsreader, click on the RSS link on the left side of the Google News search results page, copy the url at top of the page into your reader; and excerpts for new news stories will then display in your reader.

Not only will you get information to blog about, but you will stay up to speed on news that helps in your law practice.

Source on post: Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion

Related posts:

• Full-text RSS feeds preferable to excerpt feeds
• RSS subscribers not more likley to click to blog site using partial text feeds

Web based newsreader, Bloglines, made RSS easy to use for those interested, but Google Reader, also a web based newsreader, is going to bring the use of RSS susbcriptions to the masses. When I asked my ILTA (Internal Legal Tech Assoc.) session audience last week which newsreader they used, Google Reader won in a land slide.

Though Bloglines still maintains an edge, Richard MacManus of Read/WriteWeb reports on the significant Google Reader gains on Bloglines.

Here's a chart from Hitwise from January, 2007 when talk of Google Reader just began.

And here's the same charting from this month.

Bloglines GM Eric Engleman told Read/WriteWeb that with Bloglines recent re-design 'it's a two-horse race [and] the race is on!'

I'm not sure I buy it. My guess is that Bloglines recent surge is more of a general surge in RSS use, as opposed to an increase in Bloglines popularity.

Technorati was ahead of Google Blogsearch but now has to feel itself being lapped, with a real risk of becoming irrelevant. The only thing different for longtime Bloglines employees is that they had they had their pay day with Bloglines acquistion by Ask.

Technorati Tags: Google Reader, Bloglines

Not surprising that media consultant Amy Gahran writes that RSS feeds are going pretty mainstream.

Basically, the trend is that more people are more interested in getting the content they want delivered to them wherever they prefer to be, rather than having to make a special 'trip' online to someone's site. And they're using lots of popular tools to do just that.

Amy goes on to discuss the importance of journalists and news organizations understand RSS feeds.

...I'm seeing news organizations crumble because they aren't adapting their business models fast enough to the changing media landscape. Good reporters are getting laid off, and important news is going unreported, in part because news organizations are clinging to ineffective strategies like banner ads and partial-text feeds -- which depend on people coming to your site in order for you to make money -- rather than finding ways (like feed advertising and improving search visibility through full-text feeds) to make money in a more distributed, customized media environment.

Business basics, folks: You've gotta go where your customers and community are.

Amy understands the role journalism plays in an informed society and is rightfully ticked off that the industry's RSS ignorance places it in jeopardy.

Without good journalism, it's hard to get the information we need to make decisions on our own behalf. It's hard to judge where the collective good really lies. But journalism (at least on the scale and consistency that our large, complex society requires) needs a supporting business structure. That doesn't mean that huge news organizations must survive or we're all doomed. But it does mean that (regardless of news org size) the business model supporting journalism must be realistic and viable in the current environment.

That's why I'm so concerned about ignorance about feeds, and persistent loyalty to boneheaded online-media business strategies, especially among media professionals.

And she's spot on that clinging to a business models requiring partial text RSS feeds (excerpt only) to support banner ads on web pages doesn't work in the long run. The journalism industry needs to work with Google's FeedBurner to develop improved ad models with full text RSS feeds. Defying ease of use for the public which is now consuming RSS feeds in mass is a dead end.

The company has been looking for a CEO for a while, and has been burning through ton of cash, and this move it seems is a way to extend the runway for Technorati, which does have money in the bank......Technorati was one of the early start-ups to see the potential of the new web, but seemingly picked a business where Google [via Google Blog Search] was eventually going to make its presence felt.

It's a shame. As I've said before, Technorati's served a great purpose in aggregating blog feeds and making blog searches available by RSS feed. The blogosphere would be years behind without Technorati and its founder David Sifry.

However, Technorati may have been wise to sell out while it was in first place, as Feedburner recently did, rather than to try and out run Google.

David's nice summary:

• What is a Feed Reader? It’s kind of like a virtual magazine ‘shell’ that always updates with the latest stories from your favorite bloggers and content providers.
• How does it work? Without getting technical, it automatically displays current posts from blogs and websites that you’re subscribed to and alerts you to new posts.
• Why use one? To stay on top of the news, opinions, surveys, and expert advice in your industry and on topics that you want to learn more about.

David goes on to explain how to set up Google Reader as your RSS reader. Good read if you're just getting started.