What’s this? AP goes RSS
If you haven’t heard that the Associated Press is providing RSS feeds, you need to pay attention. Consultant/blogger Susan Mernit broke the story yesterday.
The Associated Press has quietly added RSS feeds to their corporate site. This is the first time AP stories are available directly on the web in RSS (as opposed to running through Yahoo News.
Jeff Jarvis points out — and I concur — that this is a very unusual move for the AP, because it is a cooperative of news organizations and hasn’t — until now anyway — marketed directly to news consumers.
I’m wondering whether that’s going to cause a burp. When the AP started its online news service, it went to incredible pains to make sure you could get to it only through members’ sites. I wonder whether Reuters’ plans to build an online brand of its own is causing a little competitive indigestion.
The AP RSS license also allows anybody to display its RSS headlines on Websites, as long as a few rules are followed, including linking back to the original story. Doesn’t this devalue the AP’s news on member Websites?
What are they thinking?
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 24th, 2005 at 9:51 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
February 26th, 2005 at 10:29 am
I eagerly went to the AP RSS site and signed up for two feeds via bloglines. Today when I clicked on them, I was disappointed to see they don’t work.
They take you to the AP general headlines site, which is okay, but they are supposed to be linked to "Technology" and such.
Maybe they should test their stuff before they announce it…..
February 26th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
I’m using NetNewsWire, and they work just fine for me, Barbara. Maybe the problem is with Bloglines?
March 1st, 2005 at 4:06 pm
I’m using Bloglines and they work for me. So I dunno.
March 1st, 2005 at 5:01 pm
I’ve been using them in NetNewsWire since I learned about it via this blog, and WOW! Getting news right from the AP and not having to go through CNN or some other TV-related website is *marvelous*. I love this. I only hope it’s not a ploy on the AP’s part — maybe in a month, once we’re all addicted to the freedom, they’ll start charging or something?