This bodes well for the legal industry, not necessarily with each lawyer picking up a enough in ad revenue for an extra pint a week, but in other respects.

First the key points from Rodgers' article.

• 34% of global respondents to a March social media survey from Universal McCann said they use RSS feeds, a huge increase from just 15% a year ago.
• 19% of Americans use RSS feeds. Admittedly less than the RSS-addicted nations, Russia (57%), Brazil (55%) and China (54%).
• Gawker Media, one of the more successful blog networks, grew its revenue from feed-driven traffic by 300 percent in Q1 2008.
• Gawker now pulls an average CPM of $4 or $5 for its RSS inventory, only little less than they they get on the blog sites themselves.
• Some publishers are seeing their page views from RSS nearing the page views of blog and Web sites themselves.
• Google's FeedBurner will soon deliver AdSense ads contextual to the subject of the feed in addition to premium CPM ads directly sold onto RSS fee content.

I don't see lawyers needing to run ads on RSS feeds to keep a roof over their head. Some bloggers need to make money in advertising from their blogs. Such bloggers are akin to magazine publishers - ads keep the lights on.

Lawyers do not have to sell ads on their blogs and RSS feeds. Lawyers make money by blogging in an effective manner. Doing so lawyers enhance their reputation as thought leaders, landing business the lawyers want as a result.

But I see three areas where ads on lawyers RSS feeds hold value.

• Tasteful, brief ad mentioning that the blog and resulting feed are sponsored by a particular lawyer, law firm, or practice group. Much like an ad you would hear on local NPR radio. Low key for branding purposes.
• As revenue for a third party syndicating law blog content to to a lawyer's target audience (clients - current & prospective, bloggers, traditional media - trade & mass). Blogging lawyers will come to understand the tremendous value of such third party publishers aggregating (with editorial review) relevant and timely blog content for delivery of such content to this target audience. Syndicators with significant overhead in people and publishing platforms will need a revenue model. The alternative to ads is charging lawyers.
• The cost of maintaining a professional turnkey blog solution required by leading lawyers, law professors, and law students could be supplemented by ad revenue.

As traditional publishers are being pressed by declining distribution and ad revenue, we need to look for new opportunities to generate revenue. With increased use of RSS feeds and more cost effective ways to deliver ads on RSS feeds, maybe there's some opportunities.

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]

Designed for blogs with feeds managed by FeedBurner-powered (most are), this will allow placement of relevant AdSense content ads on your blog. AdSense ads for the RSS feeds themselves, perhaps much more preferable to blog publishers, are not available yet.

A 300x250 or 468x60 text or image AdSense ad, like those depicted below, will appear below your first post and on archive pages once you have installed the necessary code. The ad content is automatically targeted to complement your blog's content and you may customize the colors so the ad unit fits your site's look and feel.

I am not a fan of running advertising for others products and services on lawyer blogs so as to generate ad revenue. It's cheesy. However, a well placed tasteful ad for your firm's services running after your first blog post may be a nice fit.