RSS hijacking??? . . .

. . . Or trouble at Ovum??

I'm a huge fan of Google Reader (and before that other RSS readers, but Google the first for purely online reading). As a result, I rarely go to web sites or blogs directly, I just skim read the headlines in Google Reader and then delve further if something takes my fancy. I also have a huge list of RSS feeds that I subscribe to.

I was adding Ovum to my RSS list today when a strange thing happened. When I added the address (www.ovum.com/rss), Google Reader responded by telling me I'd subscribed to a feed called ARmadgeddon. WTF, I thought, so I tried again. Same response. End result is if you subscribe to Ovum's RSS feed you will end up reading ARmadgeddon.

The really interesting thing is that it's not a bad result -- ending up at ARmadgeddon. According to its own blurb, it "has been set up by IT Analyst Relations professionals to relate tales of a symbiotic community: real stories, analyst gaffes and (un)predictions, analinguo, rumours, gossips and more."

Or from my short browsing session, it seems to be an insider's take on the telecom and IT analyst community, complete with gossip, movements, rumours, speculation and everything else that makes for a good read.

While I'm happy to keep it in my feed list, I'm still wondering how Ovum's RSS link manages to take you to ARmadgeddon. A disgruntled Ovum staffer perhaps? Try it out for yourself -- go to www.ovum.com and near the top you'll see a link "Latest comments available via RSS". Put that in your reader and see where it takes you (just clicking on the link doesn't work, you have to put it in Google Reader or something similar). And do leave a comment if you get the same result or have any insights . . .