Cheezhead

“Stickiness and be-back.”

It’s a term used to describe a Web site that warrants a loyal, return audience. It’s a goal. Creating such sites usually means a fat bottom line via ad revenue. It’s been a pretty good system for the last 10 years. Just ask portals like Yahoo!

Don’t get comfortable, however. “Stickiness and be-back” is gradually being replaced by “find and feed.” Break it down:

Find
Success on the Web, at its core, is largely about getting found. Whether it be by search engine (the most important, both internal and external), blogroll, MySpace page, wiki, or ideally some coordination of all-the-above, your site must be found.

Feed
Once found, it’s all about RSS - the process of allowing users to get specific content from your site delivered to a feed reader of choice.

Why? People are busy, markets are crowded, traditional advertising ain’t gettin’ it done, spam is taking over, Britney’s single again and e-mail sucks.

Once someone finds your site, if you want them to become dedicated, you’d better have feeds for them to subscribe to.

Don’t count on them surfing around for hours, coming back tomorrow or signing up for your ho-hum e-newsletter (assuming it doesn’t land in a spam filter first).

No RSS? Expect to gradually lose influence and market share.

Don’t believe me? Case in point: Checkout the desktop screenshot of the new Microsoft Vista, coming to the masses next year:

Notice the RSS feed option squared in red on the right. Additionally, RSS is already a major feature in the new version of Internet Explorer. Chances are, users of Firefox and Opera are already on The Feed Train.

One could argue that RSS users encompass but a small percentage of Internet users. Today, they’d be correct. But it’s also easy to argue that the adoption rate will quickly increase with the hundreds of millions of new computers bought each year, all most likely complete with Vista.

It’s not too late. If you’re still stuck in a “stickiness” mentality, get over it. Quickly.