Chris Pirillo makes the case for switching for content publishers:
If the world was a perfect place, e-mail publishing would still be a viable model for getting the word out. But marketers and morons (two groups that are far from mutually exclusive) have flooded the space with noise. So now, instead of spending our time on crafting quality content, we waste it with endless bickering. We now have to fight with ISPs, begging them to let our messages pass through without being filtered or flagged. We have to go out of our way to educate anti-spam solutions on our product to make sure we don’t get blacklisted. We have to explain to our subscribers how someone between here and there is possibly blocking the transmission, possibly troubleshooting their software, trying to figure out if there’s a utility that’s keeping them from receiving the stuff they asked for. Ugh.
So, how do we surmount these ever-maddening hurdles? By walking around them. Trying to purify a polluted stream is like tilting windmills – so we shouldn’t bother. However, if you look ahead with me, you’ll see that there is a bridge to the other side. “Enough metaphor, already!” We want to put information directly in front of the people who want to see it. Obviously, asking them to visit our site on a regular basis is not enough – which is why we started to push targeted content to them directly in the first place (after asking their permission). The key? The bridge? The solution? The Rosetta Stone of online data.
RSS.
Who is RSS for? That all depends on who you ask. For end users, it’s an easier way to get the information they’re looking for. For bloggers, it’s a better way to keep track of their conversations. For publishers, it’s yet another opportunity to keep their audience in touch. For developers, it’s another way to use and interpret data. For marketers, it’s a way to maximize their business relationships. The publisher still controls the content. The subscriber finally controls the subscription.
RSS+T
