Email vs. RSS

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Email vs. RSS

There's been a bunch of discussion over the past couple months about RSS replacing email as a way to communicate. I don't think its going to happen. Sure email is broken. There's way too much spam, the ISPs are getting overloaded, and it's inherently unintelligent and insecure.

But email is the primary application for most people who use the Internet. And it will continue to be. The only thing that is close in terms of mass adoption is instant messaging. RSS is not even on the map.

I'll give you a good example. TypePad is a great service. I love it. And it supports RSS perfectly. But very few of my friends and colleagues know how to use RSS to syndicate my blog and use a reader. But lots of them want to be notified when i post.

So the people at TypePad pointed me to a great service called Bloglet.

I went there, set up an account, and added some HTML to my blog and now i have a subscribe field at the top of my blog. Anyone who wants to get an email alert when i post can simply give me (actually Bloglet) their email address.

I think a lot more people will want to subscribe this way. Its simpler and easier for them. It brings the blog into the mainstream of everyday internet use. I know some people will think i am going backwards not forwards. But i think email is and will continue to be the primary form of communication on the internet and i want to harness its power for my blog.

Comments (7) | Posted October 10, 2003 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

Maybe once RSS reading capability is built into the most popular e-mail clients (read: Outlook), and some method of easy "auto discovery" is developed, we might see the adoption of "feeds."

Nobody is going to click on something that says "RSS." But maybe if some suave marketeers came up with a way to call it something else (Microsoft called it "Channels" when they introduced Active Desktop) that would make my mother click o n it, we'll have something.

I do see a lot of benefit in one-way communication. I'd rather subscribe to Microsoft's, Apple's, or any other organization's RSS feed than say "Yes, you can spam me" when I fill in the forms on their website.

The right UI and careful thought on the client side will make receiving and filtering this sort of communication much easier than dealing with spam filters and bulk e-mails.

I guess there is lots of debate surrounding RSS as a container anyway... Maybe some new standard?

Like you were saying before, I think there's "money" here for the people clever enough to solve the problems.

Ultimately, though, the clients software is going to own this (Microsoft, Apple, Eudora, etc. etc.).

Nice blog, by the way. Really enjoying it.

Posted by: scotty the body | Oct 10, 2003 7:19:40 AM

I think you are right about merging RSS and email to create a new way for people to subscribe to content.

I imagine people are working on this but don't know exactly who.

If anyone else does, please let us know

Posted by: Fred Wilson | Oct 11, 2003 7:47:22 AM

Just read an interview with Anil Dash in InfoWorld. He said that he suspects all the major e-mail clients to support RSS in their next releases and explained that Six Apart has been in informal talks with them.

Obviously that's a big next step forward for syndication/RSS/xformat, but most likely will help with the widespread adoption of RSS the most, since it's the primary format right now.

That's good for syndication, but bad for anyone who was banking on making money with some sort of Feed reading software. It's really not necessary once Outlook and Apple Mail (or whatever it's called) support it.

As far as services money goes, I can see a little opportunity in implementing this for companies.

Ideas are probably needed next, or which I seem to suffer a deficit.

Posted by: scotty the body | Oct 16, 2003 7:18:12 AM

Quikonnex is the perfect combination of rss feed, easy subscriber signup and two-way communication - all without email. They even provide their own cross-browser, cross-platform viewer that will knock the socks off most systems out there. And it's totally media-rich - text, html, audio and/or video.

It's the easiest way to bring interactivity back to publishers who have been suffering at the hands of email delivery. And it's a very effective alternative to email.

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