Bloggers are using RSS and other data bite formats in droves. But if RSS is to be the next wave to sweep the rest internet, there'll need to be a revenue model to support it. I don't mean to say that no revenue model means death to data bite, but clearly, if there is a solid revenue model, more effort and expertise will be focused on moving things forward.

So, who are the players, which of them need revenue, where will they get it, and will we accept it?

The players: developers of publishing tools, client tools, and aggregating or other intermediate tools. Web publishers and republishers. End users.

Do they need revenue? The end user doesn't need to get revenue from data bite formats, they just want the data. If I could get paid to read somebody's feed, sure, I would, but I won't stop reading (feeds I'm interested in) if I can't. Developers need revenue to pay for their time (sure, not all do, but more revenue = more developer time and expertise). Publishers need revenue to pay for their bandwidth and design costs (and perhaps to pay for the tools), and to ensure that the opportunity cost of providing data bite feeds is not greater than the value of doing so (if showing something else in the place of data bite feeds would make them more money, the incentive is to go elsewhere).

Tomorrow I'll talk about where the revenue will come from, and perhaps even get to issues that may affect how well data bite advertising is accepted.