| Have you heard? RSS is dead. Well, its not really dead, of course, but Twitter and Facebook have gotten some folks—like Steve Gillmor and, most recently, Sam Diaz—so starry-eyed that they've declared RSS as a thing of the past.  I'll go out on a limb (not really very far out) here and predict that RSS will be with us for a long, long time. RSS is a data interchange protocol. The types of content and the types of applications using RSS will continue to evolve (as they have for a decade) but the RSS protocol will be in wide use for many years to come.
Twitter will not change this. Nor will Facebook. These (and many other) applications represent new sources of data and more opportunities for data interchange. RSS (probably with some real-time enabling enhancements such as PubSubHubbub) will continue to exist behind the scenes. I've been around this industry for a long time now. I remember people predicting the death of COBOL at the hands of "modern, structured" languages like C. Guess what? It didn't happen. There are more lines of COBOL in production now than ever before. Of course, there are lots of other things in production now, too, but COBOL is far, far from dead and gone. So shall it be with RSS. It is simply too deeply entrenched. But the need for attention grabbing headlines is also deeply entrenched. So, I expect we'll continue to see articles about the death of RSS for years to come. | 
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I just read the TechCrunch post on how Tipjoy is closing up shop. The post mentioned that Tipjoy was launched with a million dollars of funding but has run out of gas and decided to discontinue operations.
To all those with snarky remarks regarding burning through a million dollars in funding:
I have founded, funded (personally and through investors), and operated four startup companies, three of which were acquired, one of which is still operating. Further, three of those four were done with my wife as my partner and co-founder. So, I have some insight into what it takes to try something like what Ivan and Abby (married Tipjoy co-founders) tried.
I fully realize that raising a million bucks sounds like a lot of money–especially to people who have never tried to raise money or been responsible for operating a company and making payroll. But in truth, it is often difficult to raise only a million bucks because for most VCs, it is too small an amount to justify the due diligence effort (and for most angel investors, it is too large).
A million bucks burns very quickly in a startup with little or no revenue. It is not as easy as it sounds to take a million dollars and create a profitable business. And it is a very very rare case where an entrepreneur raises a million bucks and then uses the cash to live high on the hog for a year.
I challenge each snarky commenter to describe how they have done better. I challenge each to relate a story about how they put their personal income at risk for a few years (or even a few months) for an idea they had. I challenge each to describe the jobs they’ve created and the number of people they have employed.
I suspect we’ll hear a lot of silence (if you exclude folks insecure enough to feel the need to flame me for my critique.)