Why, as a web Publisher, why can I not easily send an update to my RSS subscribers without publishing a new post?

Let’s say I have 700 RSS subscribers, and this is the primary way that people read my content.  Would Publishers find it valuable to be able to send a direct message to these 700 subscribers via RSS, without publishing a time-consuming new blog post?

Many Publishers use Twitter essentially as an extension of their site.  It’s a way to stay connected to readers without having to invest the time and effort writing an entire blog post.  Your RSS subscribers are, in fact, the same as your Twitter followers.  They’ve opted in and decided to follow you.  But it’s not as easy to communicate with them as it should be.

In my publishing platform, I’d like to just ping my RSS subscribers with a “micro post”.  Think Twitter built into a publishing platform.  I’ve written before about how RSS has many of the properties of social networks.

I’m more of a Marketing person than a Programmer, so perhaps it’s not hard technically to build this around RSS.  It could just be a matter of building a publishing platform that makes it easy for Publishers to communicate on a one-off basis with their RSS subscribers, using existing protocols.

It can be done, and will be done, in the next generation web Publishing platform.  Or maybe Twitter can partner with a Blogger or WordPress to help their Publishers maintain connections with followers, directly from their interface, without having to write an entire blog post.

I’ve just started using Google Latitude for iPhone more.  But there’s a problem I knew about but hadn’t experienced.

My friends who have Blackberries have their location constantly updated on the phone.  I have to actually navigate to the Latitude website in Safari for my location to be updated! This is because Apple does not allow 3rd party apps to run “in the background”, persistently on the iPhone.  iTunes of course runs great, which makes iTunes 1000x more useful and engaging. You can double-click on the home button on the iPhone and go to the next track on my iPod – while still using a different app.

Here are some snippets from Google’s blog post that tell you how Google felt about it:

We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.

READ: We wasted money on building a Latitude app

Google, like Apple, continues to push for improvements in web browser functionality. Now that iPhone 3.0 allows Safari to access location, building the Latitude web app was a natural next step. In the future, we will continue to work closely with Apple to deliver useful applications — some of which will be native apps on the iPhone, such as Earth and YouTube, and some of which will be web apps, like Gmail and Latitude.

READ: Apple better make up for this

Unfortunately, since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we’re not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile. Nevertheless, your location is updated every time you fire up the app and then continuously updated while the app is running in the foreground.

READ: Apple is unfairly limiting 3rd party applications from running in the background. Other phones are more open.

So Microsoft bundles their own applications with their operating system.   Apple gives their own applications an advantage on the iPhone – are these two companies really that different?

Update 9/18 – Google has posted their FCC filing on the Google Voice rejection, and touch on Latitude as well. The filing states that the Latitude app was rejected by Apple because:

1. Replaced the preloaded Google Maps app
2. Could cause user confusion since the preloaded Maps version is Google Maps
3. Offers new features not present on the preloaded version of Google Maps

Apple states they don’t want apps that could replace such functionality and confuse users. Maybe the question about why Google wouldn’t just build this into the Maps app is a good one?

I wish that I can open all the tabs I have open in Firefox in Google Chrome, with the click of a button.  Or for that matter from Internet Explorer to Firefox, IE to Chrome, and all permutations.

Chrome is more powerful in certain ways, and if  I’m watching a lot of videos and listening to streaming radio during a web session, I want to be able to open all tabs in Chrome. I think Chrome does a better job of handling large, memory-heavy web apps.  Each tab in Chrome is considered a new browser window, in a way – memory usage on individual tabs does not bleed into other tabs.

As a user, I should be able to choose which browser I want to view a web page in, at any moment in time.

Today Facebook acquired Friendfeed for approximately $50 million in cash and stock, according to the WSJ.

I use Friendfeed for work, but not personally. We have 190 subscribers.  It seemed like a nice way to aggregate all our different social media feeds, and I put the widget on our blog.  I also wanted to reach out to any customers that were heavy Friendfeed users. I never interacted much directly with the service, and eventually replaced their widget with one from our Facebook fan page, as well as a branded widget from Widgetbox (note: branded widgets are much more tempting to a company than a Friendfeed branded widgets. That’s good for their brand, not for mine).

Friendfeed was built by a smart team of ex-Googlers, creators of GMail, AdSense, and Maps among others. If Facebook’s long term strategy is to become more adept at real-time search, know how from Google is very valuable. This part of the WSJ article hints on the importance of search -

Monday, Facebook also launched a significant new feature that allows users to search the stream of items their friends share or other users make public for terms like celebrities or news events. Previously, most of the search functionality on the site was focused on finding particular people.

This is also clearly about Twitter. I view Twitter as the Internet television. Content creators use it for broadcasting. Twitter users are amateur content creators that want to reach potentially interested consumers. Twitter is not so much many-to-many, but some-to-many.

Friendfeed has taken similar shape. It’s a place for experts in the information economy, primarily Internet though leaders, to syndicate their content – an elite community.

Now, this community does create some valuable content. These are the creators whose content you need to index and make searchable. They also break news and opinions on your platform.

Ultimately Facebook acquired 1) a talented group of engineers and 2) an elite group of users.

Google’s Schmidt Leaves Apple Board – WSJ.com

“Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest,” Mr. Jobs said in a press statement. “Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s board,” Mr. Jobs said.

This doesn’t sound very amicable. When you start a press release with “unfortunately”, you’re stating flat out that the party did not cave in to what you wanted. In this case, Apple’s request to Google to not enter Apple’s core businesses.  Apple’s core business is software.

Is Google a search company, an advertising company, or a software company?  Does a software company aim to make the world’s information universally useful and accessible?

I think an Internet software company does – Google is a software company.  The right software will make the right platform ubiquitous.  Google search is the right software to make the Internet what it is today.  In the past Mac software contributed to bringing the computer market where it is today, then Microsoft launched Windows, AND opened it up to multiple OEM’s.  The market is changing, and this move hints at the place for software in a web-based world.

There’s been some discussion lately about software distribution via the web (over the browser) vs. on a platform (Mac OS, Windows, Symbian, app stores, etc).

The web can fit a ton more apps than a platform. On my iPhone I have 25 or so apps. The web does not have the same boundaries that platform apps do.

Here’s how I see it – there’s a short tail of “must have” apps that will run on a platform. Examples of these are MS Office, Personal Music Players like iTunes, and any software that uses a lot of processing power, like music software for Macs.

However, the Web is naturally the more scalable distribution medium. There are millions of web apps, all accessible through the browser. You could not fit a million apps on your phone or your desktop.

Or is it that the platform to house a million apps has yet to be invented?