AFP goes backwards shuts off RSS feeds

blog.newscred.com

14 points·tm··6 comments

"Granted AFP is not a newspaper" Ding ding ding. Newspapers, shaky though their business model is, make money from advertising, and only indirectly from the actual news. News wires, on the other hand, make all their money from the news itself.

If Bloomberg had ever been insane enough to provide live data over RSS, would it also be a "step backward" for them to come to their senses?

What about the distinction between personal (google reader) and commercial usage. I think that was the point the author was trying to make. Individuals aren't going to pay thousands in lincense fees for their personal reading. But there are benfits for AFP to give away (snippets only) for free - they can monetize the traffic, drive brand awareness etc. But I guess they didn't want the traffic.

Wire news is extravagantly expensive. The amount they could make from ads on feeds is going to be a pittance in comparison.

Sure, once the big cash cow newspapers die they'll have to have a rethink, but there are going to be bigger problems with news creation when that day actually arrives.

RSS is just one of those things where no media person thinking in a pre-internet world will ever understand; giving your content away, with few ways of monetizing the readers?! Preposterous!

When you're selling the same content to others, perhaps it doesn't make much sense, especially when these others repurpose this content into RSS feeds with their own advertisments.

All the arguments for this change just makes me think: why did they have the service in the first place?

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