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Intelligence
Do Enough People Know RSS to Make it a Worthwhile Communication Channel?

Intelligence

Do Enough People Know RSS to Make it a Worthwhile Communication Channel?

Aug 28, 2006By Michael Stoner

You may or may not remember the early days of the Internet boom. Lots of us were excited about the potential of email, but people debated whether email was an important communication channel—and talked about how and when to use it. Can you imagine justifying an email strategy to a senior VP back, say, in 1994? You got questions about penetration and reach, not to mention ROI. And how big was the list? Were you going to be a pioneer or were you going to be effective? And how would you know?

Turns out that people maybe should be using that same attitude about RSS. Some of find RSS a delight: the information we want, without the spam! And marketers like it for the same reason. Turns out, though, that a lot of people (a LOT of people) don’t know what RSS is, much less use it. A recent report shows that only 9 percent of US employees subscribe know what RSS is and only 2 percent of US employees subscribe to RSS feeds. A recent eMarketer article summarizes the gloomy research. Personally, I agree with James Belcher, the author: RSS has no future outside specialty markets until RSS functionality is incorporated seamlessly into other tools like browsers. Personally, I’m waiting for it be added to my email client. Apple Computer, are you listening??? How about adding RSS capability to Mail, thank you very much.


  • Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?