Joining Pheedo

I’m quiting my job, which sounds a bit odd since I’m self-employed. Pheedo has bought Blogsnob and as part of the deal I’ll be joining Pheedo as CTO (press release here). I’ll be helping build their advertising technology for both blogs and feeds.

This deal is great for a number of reasons. The rest of the management team is smart and we compliment each other well. Better yet, we get along personally. There’s a lot to be said for liking the people you work with.

There’s a slew of new features slated for the ad exchange and some very interesting things we’re working toward with the RSS ad server¹. And before you begin to decry the commercialization of RSS, realize we’re working on a lot more than a way to stuff banners into a feed. Any monkey could do that.

Feeds are moving to the mainstream. Greater numbers of consumers are demanding feeds and ever-increasing numbers of publishers are providing them. But for commercial entities to provide a feed, they need to have a way to make some money off it. The Web as we know it today didn’t take off until the technologies that aid advertising and commerce were added. Similarly, RSS will take off once publishers have a way to turn it into a business.

Commercial publishers are dipping their toes into the RSS waters, trying to see how they might be able to embrace this new medium. We’re going to help them discover that the water’s warm and inviting. We’re going to help them succeed and publish the content you want via RSS.

Oh, and that job I mentioned the other day? It’s for Pheedo.

¹ When I say RSS, I mean all flavors of RSS, Atom, and any future syndication formats.