Over at WebProNews.com, Rich takes note of my recent posting for an RSS Hacker position at Yahoo.

I'm not sure if he let out a secret about Yahoo's RSS plans or not, but I certainly would choose my words more carefully when calling for "RSS hackers" to send in resumes.

Rich, you've lost me there. What sort of secret do you think I'm hiding? And why do you think I did not choose my words carefully?

Remember, we're serious about RSS. Why would we try to hide that?

As I've said before, we're helping to take RSS mainstream. Not only do we produce hundreds of thousands of RSS feeds, we've given literally millions of users access to syndicated content via My Yahoo. And we're not stopping there.

Either way, thanks for the coverage. It helps cast a wider net for stuff like this. Thanks also to others who picked it up, including The Unofficial Yahoo Weblog, The RSS Weblog, and InsideGoogle.

Posted by jzawodn at November 19, 2004 12:48 PM

Reader Comments
# Rafe said:

I think the guy is a moron who doesn't understand how hackers use the word hacker.

on November 19, 2004 01:19 PM
# Anil Dash said:

I was gonna say the same thing as Rafe, only just point out he's probably a non-geek. The resurgence of "hack" being used with its original meaning hasn't reached the mainstream yet.

on November 19, 2004 01:21 PM
# Mike Hillyer said:

You should have asked for 1337 R$$ h4xx0rZ!

on November 19, 2004 01:24 PM
# Matt said:

Yahoo should provide RSS feed for the movie listings.

on November 19, 2004 02:02 PM
# What is Y! Planning? said:

Sure, the guys a nob but whatever...

Come on Jeremy, out with it then, what are Y! planning?

on November 19, 2004 02:13 PM
# /pd said:

I think the "note taker" has no clue on what the term meant in the geek world. In our world, its certainly used for the highly skilled, coder. PERIOD. If there is someone out there trying the character assination game, you'll just have to deal with the foo which tickles along. This is the way blogs work, will work and will continue working. The community understands, the blogsphere stands by you and certainly WebProNews.com is placed on my watch list for misintrupration of 'words'.

Anyhow, next time ask for a "whitehatter" . The Echelon sytems don't have that word in their lookup table. !!! n I bet you the morons won't know the difference !!!

on November 19, 2004 03:29 PM
# Rich Ord said:

Jeremy and the others who commented:

The article was meant to bring attention to your post... which it did. Regarding my RSS comment, since I have not seen major announcements regarding Yahoo and RSS ... I figured our WebProNews audience would be interested.

Regarding the hacker comment (sigh) ...
You are right, I'm not a true techie, I'm the CEO of iEntry and have been involved in internet ventures since 1996. The WebProNews audience consists of a lot of entrepreneur, pr people, marketing types and techies like yourselves. All but the tech types think of hackers as something to shy away from.

However, I understood what you meant when you used the term hackers ... but because it is often used to refer to someone doing something illegal I'm not sure I would have used it in a post about a job. But of course, I'm not a member of the "geek world".

By the way, our iEntry IT manager agrees with all of you.

Please don't hold it against me!

Thanks,
Rich Ord
CEO, iEntry, Inc.

http://www.ientry.com
http://www.webpronews.com

on November 20, 2004 08:37 AM
# Nathan Slaughter said:

You say "we're helping to take RSS mainstream." I say your tools (news search as RSS in particular) are ready for the mainstream. Selling Yahoo! as the source for professionals is what's left.

I wondered why Yahoo! would be seeking someone with just enough knowledge to be dangerous - a kabitzer, byte pusher, hack. Now I know that hacker is different. Thanks for that and the RSS on news search.

on November 20, 2004 11:25 AM
# /pd said:

RichOrd: Very commendable posting ..Your Value offering is accepted !!

on November 20, 2004 03:10 PM
# Dylan Tweney said:

Anyone who has seen the new my.yahoo.com would understand that Yahoo is already very serious about RSS. That clearly took a lot of thought, and a lot of work, and the result is amazingly useful. Why wouldn't you want RSS hackers? It seems obvious enough!

p.s. I for one am looking forward to seeing what your new hires hack together...

on November 21, 2004 11:07 AM
# justin said:

"I certainly would choose my words more carefully when calling for "RSS hackers" to send in resumes."

jeez - what a moron. the term hacking has been used in tech circles since the PDP-11 in the late 60s.

Heard it being used by all the time at work by Perl types during the cgi-bin explosion in the mid 90s - "yeah , we know. that widget wasnt working so we hacked a workaround solution..."

I heard unix sysadmins use it all the time as well - "Yeah, i solved that sendmail issue by hacking the config file".

Jeremy - you're ad was totally fine, and it was worded correctly for the intended audience.

on November 22, 2004 01:32 AM
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