RSS Will Not Replace Email

Over the years technology has provided us with more options for
sending and receiving content over the internet. One of the newest is
a delivery system called Real Simple Syndication or "RSS".

Definition:

RSS is a format for delivering news and other content through a
syndication channel. The most common sites that publish RSS feeds
still include major news organizations whose information is broken
into different stories and can be delivered to recipients once
published.

This delivery concept has also been adopted by other non-news related
sites such as the blogging community who publish posts (similar to
news stories) and allow other people to subscribe through RSS to
receive their blog posts automatically.

RSS Usage Rates:

RSS has been in use since 1999 but still hasn't been adopted by the
mass Internet community. According to an October 2005 White Paper
published by Yahoo, "Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet
users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used
RSS." [http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss/RSS_whitePaper1004.pdf]

A publisher looking to distribute their content can't rely on just RSS
alone.

Tools to Read RSS:

To read an RSS feed you need news aggregator software to capture, read
and store all the content that is delivered through RSS. There are
many popular aggregators on the market today, many of which are free
of charge.

Two popular types of aggregators are web based readers (Bloglines) or
a desktop reader (SharpReader). The web based reader is an online
free service that you login and can subscribe, read and manage all
your RSS feeds. The desktop software is similar in features to its
online counterpart but is installed and runs on your computer.

Will RSS Replace Email?

I'd be willing to wager that anyone reading this article today checked
their email, in fact going a bit further I bet you not only checked
your email but also replied to some of it as well. Will RSS replace
email? - I think we can collectively say -- no, email is far to
important but the beauty of email is that you can marry the two
technologies together to deliver information that subscribers want, in
the format they want...

Sean Cohen, Director of Client Relations & Development of
Newtown, PA based AWeber Communications, Inc. an opt-in
email service provider. Learn how you can incorporate RSS and
email automatically with our newest feature -- Feed Broadcaster.



Learn how you can incorporate RSS and email automatically with our
newest feature -- Feed Broadcaster.