There's a blogger from Australia who had run across the DotNetRocks podcast, and had some questions about what InfoCenter is and what InfoCenter isn't. Quite frankly, I've been amazed at the response, considering the CTP isn't yet evailable.
At any rate, one of the questions that came up was around the value and/or role of the aggregator of feeds - not just software, but the humans who inject domain expertise and experience in putting together an aggregated blog. People who involve software and people to bring together a noise-free, targeted feed.
For this, I look to the last letter in RSS? That S stands for Syndication. Effectively, the way I see the world is that every blogger is a production company, generating syndicated content. While we can broadcast our own content via our blogs, there's also interest in repackaging our content and leveraging it in other places.
Just like in television, people generate revenue by hiring program directors / editors that compile a group of syndicated content into a product or programming schedule and sell ads based on viewership.
While the underlying value is in the content, there's tremendous value in the aggregation of particular content by people we trust and who we hold up as experts in a particular area.
We all have the opportunity to become program directors of RSS content, what needs to be figured out is how the revenue stream works back for the creator of the content. In the syndicated television world, you buy rights to a show for a particular period, for a particular market. The payment, as I understand it, is established up front.
On the web, it would seem this would be more fluid, and as a result there needs to be a way for either the syndicator to specify ads to be shown in conjunction with their content, or for networks/program directors to provide incremental revenue back to the networks/program directors.
