August 14, 2003

RSS Replacing Email

Chris Pirillo publishes email newsletters. But he is seeing the end of email as a viable push method. Spam is perhaps the main reason for email's usability decline. But, according to Pirillo, RSS represents a new opportunity for email publishers:

It enables headlines to be distributed online instantly and then interpreted seven ways from Sunday. It opens the door for selling subscriptions to new and existing content. Instead of giving people a newsletter formatted to our tastes and delivered on our time schedule, we can provide them with a means to get the same content in text or HTML whenever they want it.

Update (8/22): Michael Fraase comments on Pirillo's article, and comes to the same conclusion. Barbera J. Feldman, who I mentioned the other day, is also moving to RSS. She even provides a nice analysis of the issues and RSS tutorial.