By: E&P Staff As RSS technology becomes increasingly popular, allowing more and more readers to have headlines and text from their favorite Web sites delivered automatically to their computers, several newspapers have announced their own free, branded RSS readers, hoping they'll be able to better maintain their readerships.
Reuters reported today that the Los Angeles Times and London's Guardian are both putting their brands on an RSS reader, NewsPoint.
CNet, an online news site, also launched its own reader in preview release, Reuters reported.
Users can subscribe to RSS feeds from a variety of sources, not just newspapers but also blogs and any other kind of information site that offers a feed. They can also customize what information they'd like to receive from each source. But because users employing RSS readers never visit story pages on the news source's own site, they don't see the advertisements that are placed there.
These branded readers will come pre-set to receive feeds from their affiliated sites.
"We think the developments that are happening with RSS are simultaneously very exciting and very frightening," Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing for Guardian Newspapers, told Reuters. "On one level it's a great opportunity -- you're making it more convenient for people to reach you. The downside is about losing end-to-end control over how people experience your content," Waldman said.
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