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Private Feeds

• What is "limitation of messages"?

Providers can choose to restrict a Private Feed so that subscribers know they will receive only a maximum number of X messages from that Feed.

This feature gives publishers the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to only send you what they promise to – and benefit from more subscribers than with email newsletters or RSS feeds.

For example, imagine a provider offers to inform users upon launch of a new web service. As a potential subscriber, would you rather subscribe to…

Limiting Feeds is a useful tool for "good" publishers who do not intend to send spam or other unwanted messages to users – which makes them benefit in form of more subscribers.

Our vision is that users will be continuously subscribing to Private Feeds as they browse the net, thereby creating a highly personalized newspaper.


• When does it make sense to limit a Private Feed?

Every time a Feed gets limited, providers demonstrate a sincere commitment to only send the most relevant messages – it therefore always is a positive signal to potential subscribers, making subscription more likely.

However, in some cases limiting a Private Feed can be especially useful, e.g. if:

o ...the nature of the Feed already implies a limit in required messages (e.g. "joke of the week", reminder for yearly events, one-time alerts etc.)

- or if -

o ... messages are not sent very often (e.g. a blog updated only twice a week)

- or if -

o ... potential subscribers don’t know the provider (trust)

The limitation of Feeds is therefore especially useful to win new subscribers.

Whether limited or not, subscribers always benefits from the Private Feeds' open history, quick & easy subscription and free choice of delivery options, either in their Personal Newspapers, as single mails or as RSS Feed.


• I already offer an RSS Feed which has many subscribers - does it still make sense to offer a Private Feed?

Yes: Private Feeds are not only a potential substitution, but may also serve as a useful addition to existing RSS Feeds.

For example, if your blog posts talks about an event you are planning to organize in a couple of months, you can offer a one-time notification for your readers to ensure that:

- Readers who have not subscribed to your RSS Feed also get a chance to be notified
- Your existing RSS subscribers will be reminded one week in advance of the event (RSS is a weak notification tool, see next question)


• Why is RSS not a good notification tool?

RSS is designed to deliver messages from publishers to subscribers on a frequent basis and not suitable for alerts and notifications which typically do not occur very often.

For example, when subscribing to an RSS Feed on a personalized news page (e.g. iGoogle), the user expects an ongoing delivery of new messages as otherwise he would be looking at the same messages over and over again.

Also, RSS implies a higher risk that single messages do not get read as new messages push out old ones (in the example of the personalized news pages like iGoogle). However, especially for alerts it is important that they get read. A message from a Private Feed delivered instantly as a single email, however, is sitting in the subscribers inboxes until it is deleted.


• What if I limit my Feed, send the maximum number of messages allowed, and then get to know important information that I also need to send to my subscribers? Can I still do it?

After sending the maximum number of messages allowed, you cannot send any additional messages. This is the basic idea of the limitation-feature which gives subscribers the security that they are not overwhelmed with information.

If there is a chance that you might send some more messages in exceptional cases, give some room for that when setting the Feed up. For example, if you intend to send weekly messages to your subscribers but know there is a chance that in some weeks you might need to send 2, set the maximum number of messages to “5 per month” or “2 per week”.

Community Feeds

• What are the chances that messages get reported for a Community Feed?

This depends very much on how popular the topic is. For instance, if you're an Alicia Keys fan and subscribe to a Community Feed that informs if she publishes a new album (and only then!) it is quite likely that somebody will report this message, be it Alicia Keys fans, other subscribers, their production company etc.

There are many people who actually have an interest that the message goes out to as many people as possible (for some it's free advertising!), and it's dead easy to report this information on NextFeeds.com.

For new Community Feeds that focus on a niche, allow a bit of time for users to subscribe and other visitors to become aware of it (the profile page of Community Feeds is search engine optimized). Note that it's not required to be a subscriber (or even a registered user) in order to report a message, so it's very easy to do so quickly. Also note that you can increase chances that messages get reported considerably, see the next question.


• Can I help to increase the chances that messages will be reported?

Yes, indeed. You can…

o …tell your friends about it via the NextFeed.com notification tool (go to the profile page of the Feed and click on "Tell friends")
o …post the link to the profile page of the Feed in forums, your homepage etc.
o … recommend the profile page of the Community Feed on social media sites (del.icio.us, StumbleUpon etc.)
o …tell people about it offline

Also make sure that the Feed has all important tags so that it can easily be found by other users.

Other FAQs

• I like NextFeeds.com so much that I am thinking about making a clone of it - is that ok?

No. Better become a sponsor or investor in NextFeed.com. Please contact us for that on our feedback page or through our feedback tool.


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