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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

March, 2005

A Political Blog That Wasn't

The other day I wrote about some marketing "blogs" that had no RSS feed. Well, thanks to a hot to from The Reverend, I have another feedless blog.

The thing is, this one isn't a marketing blog, it's a political one. Turns out Illinois Senator Barack Obama has started a blog. In his first entry he explains why:

Today I am starting a new blog that I hope will help you keep up to date on the happenings of Congress and the issues that are important to people throughout Illinois.

Check back to this site regularly for more updates.

Alright, now at least the excuse with a marketing website could possibly be (and I don't condone this) that customers aren't interested in marketing RSS feeds, but Barack and Co., what's your excuse? WHERE'S YOUR RSS?

It's called a blog, it looks like a blog and its express purpose is to keep people up to date. But then he adds the kicker line: "check back to this site regularly." Why should I? Why don't you just add a feed? It would allow your constituents to keep up with what you're doing without requiring them to keep visiting the site. This is why RSS exists. It's a match made in heaven. So where is it?

I just don't get it. Let me reiterate my rule (via Scoble's rule): "If you do a marketing blog and you don't have an RSS feed today you should be fired."

This is even more than just a marketing blog (although that's definitely part of it), it also provides relevant political information. So where's the feed?

March 29, 2005
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.