Helping people understand RSS has been a pain point of the amazingly useful technology since it first popped up on blogs several years ago. Whether it was “Subscribe to RSS” or consistent icons, everything else fell short. “Follow this *(blog, site, topic, whatever)” gets to the point immediately and should help users know what to expect when clicking on the link.

But when a user lands on a traditional RSS page (listing of the last 10 or so links) with various calls to action to subscribe via various RSS readers, we still haven’t got there. Google has an advantage. They own one of the largest blog platforms and arguably the best RSS reader. They can seamlessly tie the two together. Publishers that don’t use Blogger don’t have that luxury.

That’s why I’d encourage Google Reader (and other RSS readers) to make it simple for publishers to mimic the functionality they’re proposing for Blogger. Imagine if all the “Digg This” links in the world simply took a user to the Digg homepage and required them to figure out how to add the story they were just on. RSS is even more complicated after the “Follow this” click simply because of the number of confusing options presented to the user.

I envision the process looking something like this:

1. User clicks on “Follow this…” link
2. User is presented with 2 options
1. “Follow this…” using [[Publisher's preferred reader]]
2. “Advanced users” follow using your existing reader
3. If option 1: user creates a simple account and the feed they clicked is added to their reading list

Feel free to pick this idea apart in the comments below.

Sure, Esquire Magazine is a good example of “experiential media”–the notion that certain print magazines give their readers an experience that cannot be recreated online.

But their online publication is lacking severely. While readers are given the ability to share the story with friends and social networks, they can’t actually comment on any of the questions posed in the article. That’s right folks, it’s 2008 and Esquire.com still doesn’t offer commenting on articles.

If your magazine is strong enough to be considered “experiential media” don’t you think you’d pay extra attention to your online presence, attempting to recreate that brand affinity online?

The book is still out on widgets, but I’m cautiously optimistic on their performance.

Rather than widgeting every piece of content in our database, my goal is to develop widgets that are actually useful to readers. We have two more in development that should be launching soon. I’m not sure how well these will perform, but they are an experiment well worth the effort.

Big thanks to Shaun, Matt, Bob and the Clearspring team for getting this one out so quickly!

For years, publishers have gorged on fat marketing budgets. They grew print circulation at all costs and the ad dollars followed. They filled their editorial pages with fluff so long as an advertiser was willing to sponsor the other half of the page. And they rode this wave as far as they could until profits dried up and they folded the magazine blaming the shift in ad dollars to online.

However, publications that are innovative continue to thrive, and not just online. Newspapers like the NY Times, Washing Post and Wall Street Journal continue to build strong audiences both online and off. Magazines like The Economist and MAKE are blazing new trails regardless of where their audiences consume their product. There is no reason why a traditional publishing company, no matter the size, cannot shift their focus along with the advertising industry in order to compete.

There are hundreds of books out there that guide innovation, but how can a publishing company, strapped for resources truly innovate? The answer: look inside. Chances are, if you’ve been around a while, you have a very loyal workforce. Tap your employees (and compensate them) for their ideas. Here are a few thoughts on how you can get ideas out of your employees regardless of the size of your company:

1. Have an off-site: Get your people outside of the office for a day. Not for trust falls, but set specific goals for actionable ideas. Brainstorm, blue sky or do whatever is comfortable for your organization, but get outside and come away with some actionable objectives, big and/or small, to make it worthwhile.
2. Build a compensation plan for FLUSHED OUT ideas: An idea is only as good as the person driving it. Don’t just add a form to your intranet asking for new ideas; get your employees involved with the research, planning and implementation of the idea. An idea without an owner is destined to fizzle.
3. Think outside the box: Cliche or not, if your company is not ready to embrace an off-mission idea, someone else will. If there’s an idea percolating within your organization that isn’t your core competency and you can act on it without crushing your business, go for it!
4. Steal from others: Whether or not it’s flattery, simple tweaks of existing ideas can resonate with your audience. Think about how existing products and services could work for your audience.
5. Commit people to the cause: If your organization is large enough, you may be able to dedicate resources to “real” R&D. Either allocate some resources to new product development or implement a Google-like “20% rule” (where 20% of a worker’s time is dedicated to pet projects) or both!
6. Don’t limit yourself to online: There are still print dollars out there for the right idea. MAKE is errr… making a killing in print. Find the right audience and the ad dollars will find you.

I’m sure I’m skipping over many ways to innovate, but step one to innovative publishing is innovating a plan to innovate.