RealNetworks launches RSS readers

RealNetworks announced something that’s a departure from their video/audio offering — RealTime, a hybrid desktop/browser system for reading Web-based feeds.

RealTime can be used purely on the Web as an online feed reader, but it also has the Windows desktop client counterpart.

When RSS aggregators become ad networks

Steve Rubel predicts that RSS will venture down a similar path as the pay-per-click advertising. It will delivers a very precise way to target consumers at the exact moment they are “in market” for certain products and services.

He writes, “What if Bloglines could identify for you the tech feeds have the most engaged subscribers? In other words, they could show you the feeds have not only the most subscribers but also the readers that actively click-through on embedded links. Bloglines then could create a special “tech deals” feed for an online retailer like Amazon and offer it to these subscribers to opt into. Or, they can turn themselves into an ad network and make it easy for marketers to buy across several feeds at once and then split the revenue with the Long Tail publishers.”

News Snacks personal feed reader

SpotBack has released a new personal feedreader News Snacks that organizes all your feeds in one place. Users can manually add feeds, import feeds from OPML, select from predefined sources, customize layouts and grab other users’ setup.

There are also “Tasty snacks” to choose from that displays headlines from popular news sources.

SpotBack is a personal news site with other notable feature including tag tracker.

New Google Reader

Google has updated their feed reader, Google Reader. It reminds me about Gmail. All version dumped items from different feeds into one view, but no more. Now you can arrange feeds into directories and read them separately.

Other than a new interface, the web reader also features some new functions that are useful for reading feeds, such as auto removal of dupes.

If you haven’t been trying Google Reader, now is probably the right time to do so.