NewsFire blocks RSS ads

Sep12

NewsFire blocks RSS ads

Software/Feed aggregators

I noticed something new and interesting in the NewsFire release notes today: NewsFire now blocks advertisements from Google and FeedBurner. NewsFire is the first aggregator I know of to block advertisements in the default installation and not a custom user-supplied CSS stylesheet.

I tested the new feature with Brad Feld's feed and Engadget's feed and both display advertisements in the source but not when displayed in NewsFire. I cannot find any way to enable advertisements at the application or feed level.

Is NewsFire the first of what may be many aggregators to block advertisements in feeds? Will products tout this feature as a key reason to switch? Will publishers such as Weblogs Inc. ban such user agents from accessing their feeds?

Tags: newsfire

Posted at 11:21PM
Updated at 11:23PM
Permalink
Comments [6]

6 Comments

Commentary on "NewsFire blocks RSS ads":

Subscribe to new comments

Drew McLellan on September 13, 2005 at 9:54 AM wrote: #

Will NewsFire now mysteriously drop out of Google's search listings?
chris sivori on September 13, 2005 at 10:01 AM wrote: #

Good question, Drew. I actually think it's a good competitive development to have certain readers block ads. A lot of the advertising has just gotten out of hand (I actually have ads on my site). I'm not opposed to my ads being blocked, especially on the RSS side of the equation.
Andy Henderson on September 13, 2005 at 1:52 PM wrote: #

Not quite the first. We've had that functionality in the (free) CITA RSS Aggregator since April. Our implementation is tailorable and can be switched on and off on a per feed basis.
? Niall Kennedy on September 13, 2005 at 1:59 PM wrote: #

OK, it's the first aggregator to have this feature that shows significant usage in my user-agent logs.
David Watanabe on September 13, 2005 at 7:58 PM wrote: #

This is something that never once came up during the lengthy beta process - that is to say, not a single user asked to have advertisements unblocked. NewsFire does this blocking via a simple CSS rule which, like the rest of the NewsFire interface that is implemented in CSS, can be edited by the user. Naturally this isn't as simple as a checkbox, but if the user really wants ads, the user can have ads.
Scott M. Stolz on November 29, 2005 at 8:38 AM wrote: #

Sounds like a very good reason to NOT publish the entire post in the feed and only post a teaser. If everyone blocks ads in feeds, it will just result in feeds being teasers only, where they have to click to see the entire post and view ads as a result. Of course, the same people who block ads on feeds will probably block them on the websites too, so perhaps websites should block readers who block their ads? I can understand people who don't like too many ads, but either its ads or readers pay a subscription. Webmasters have to eat too.