An interesting post
from Dwight
Shih:
Tim Bray is in sales mode
and wants to know What’s
the RSS Soundbite? My advice would be to load up NewsGator and pitch RSS as
pull email. Email has already achieved pretty near universal acceptance in
business. Many people consider their email archives to be their primary
information storage vault — and the ones that don’t know people who do. So
pitch RSS as broadcast email and don’t give the web a chance to confuse the
issue.
I’ve been talking to a
company who is thinking about this from the email marketing perspective. Now,
normally the words “email” and “marketing” in the same sentence send a shiver
down my spine (and terms like “opt-in” just make me laugh), but I can totally
see this. If I could subscribe to a RSS feed that’s personalized for
me, containing advertisements and offers of stuff I might actually be
interested in, based on information I’ve given, I’d be all over it. Not only
would I read it, but I might even buy stuff from it. And it’s all under my
control – if I decide I’m no longer interested, I just remove my subscription.
Try that with email lists – heh.
So let’s recap. People
are getting news in their mailbox with NewsGator. They’ve voluntarily subscribed
to feeds they know contain advertising and offers. They’ve indicated the stuff
they’re interested in. Advertisers buy space in these feeds, based on user
interests and demographics. If I’m an advertiser, this seems extremely valuable.
Seems good for everyone.
So what do you think?
Would you subscribe to such a feed, personalized for you? I’m curious if I’m the
only one who thinks this could be a good idea.
:-)
RSS + advertising = inevitable.
However, I’d much rather see it happen a bit later rather than sooner. RSS is still in the process of becoming more widely known and accepted and one guaranteed way to kill it off in peoples minds is to associate it with the taint of spam.
You can “unsubscribe” from mailing lists by blocking the sending address but can you imagine people doing things like that? I can’t see them doing it with RSS feeds either.
There are already feeds coming from computer hardware/software review sites, sites pushing books and I’m sure just about everything else. These are already more or less what you described so why go out of your way to explicitly make a link between RSS and advertising? :-)
+1 on we shouldn’t associate RSS with spam in any way, shape, or form.
On the unsubscribe thing, you’re right – it doesn’t work with email. But it seems the problem would be solved with RSS – the user could just unsubscribe from the feed.
On your last point, it’s a good one. :-) I’m not necessarily pushing this idea – just trying to create an interesting discussion…but I’m not sure I see a big downside to it.
Pingback
Just don’t set expectations too high. I think that the initial success stories will come from email newsletters adding RSS to route around over zealous anti-spam measures. More on today’s blog entry.
Well guys, you finally got lucky.
Google and Lycos announced today in the UK they are beta testing RSS eMail and RSS News feeds.
RSS eMail should become mainstream within the next year or less.
Already RSS eMail, RSS eZine, RSS Marketing and RSS Publishing are in use by more than 8% of internet users.
When it hits 10%, the critical growth point will be reached and it will EXPLODE!
Go to http://www.rss-email.net for RSS eMail and RSS Publishing information now, before it’s too late and you are left behind.
Lars
Well guys, you finally got lucky.
Google and Lycos announced today in the UK they are beta testing RSS eMail and RSS News feeds.
RSS eMail should become mainstream within the next year or less.
Already RSS eMail, RSS eZine, RSS Marketing and RSS Publishing are in use by more than 8% of internet users.
When it hits 10%, the critical growth point will be reached and it will EXPLODE!
Go to http://www.rss-email.net for RSS eMail and RSS Publishing information now, before it’s too late and you are left behind.
Lars