Continuing my four-part series on revenue models for data bite formats, today I'll discuss factors likely to affect our acceptance or rejection of them.

Will we accept it? Advertising is probably the most controversial revenue-related issue facing data bite formats today. But of course, revenue is not all about advertising. Developers may sell their tools, and publishers may offer paid subscriptions. I'll discuss these, and get back to advertising tomorrow.

Just as we have free and non-free software today, we will have free and non-free tools for working with data bite feeds. If the non-free tools are better, or if they are more successfully promoted, there will be a market for them. It seems unlikely that this situation will change any time soon. Perhaps the biggest danger to both free and non-free tools would be the bundling of tools with operating systems. Microsoft is apparently planning to include some type of RSS reading capabilities in an upcoming release. Just as the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows devastated (but did not annihilate) the market for third party browsers, this is likely to have a profound impact on the market for RSS readers. Reader developers will need to prepare to compete or expand their business elsewhere.

One avenue for developers that will not dry up as quickly will be a paid support model. If they give their software away for free, and if it has feature advantages over tools offered by OS vendors, they will continue to gain users. If they can build a successful support business, they could continue to thrive. Developers planning to go such a route may want to consider developing expertise in tools from other vendors as well as their own to ensure that they can succeed even if their own tools don't. They may also find that while they could succeed with their own tools, they may in the end do better by dropping their own tools and just supporting others'.

Publishers offering paid subscriptions will obviously not have as wide an audience as those who give content away for free, but if their paid content is good enough, then such a revenue model has great potential. One thing publishers might try is publishing two versions of their feeds: one which includes advertising and/or does not provide full content (either by providing only partial content of each item, or not providing all items), and another with full content and/or no advertising. Publishers could also offer alternative languages and other variations on their feeds for a fee, any of which will be acceptable to some if the quality is high enough.