My friends at
DenverPost.com should be heartened by this item; just this week they
debuted a branded RSS reader for their readers, but went out of their way NOT to use the term
RSS.
Meanwhile, in Amsterdam, the newspaper
de Volkskrant has been offering a branded RSS reader to its website audience for a couple months now. Called "
Volkskrant Nieuwsklikker," the application has received about 150,000 downloads, according to marketing manager for new business
Rob Jan de Heer. "Thanks to this product, we receive about 10-15 percent more daily visits than before on our website," he says.
Just like DenverPost.com's managers, Jan de Heer emphasizes that in presenting the RSS reader application to the public, "We never mentioned the word RSS. Ever. Because this product is meant for the average computer user, not the computer wizards most of us are. And let's face it, most people have never heard of RSS."
The RSS application has been marketed as a "handy and very easy tool to get the latest headlines, personal news, and personal job ads on your desktop," he says. Nieuwsklikker users also are enticed with an extra edition of the paper's popular comic strip, "Sigmund."
Jan de Heer says that when he was at the
Editor & Publisher Interactive Media conference in the U.S. this spring, there was very little buzz among attendees and speakers about branded RSS readers, and only a short discussion of the topic. He wonders why.
