Today we witness what is either the mainstreaming or the death of RSS. In a New York Times article, Bob Tedeshi writes about RSS (or R.S.S., if you like it twice as long) and its relationship to on-line retailers.
Several eCommerce sites have started allowing RSS as a dumb feed that updates consumers about releases by the favorite authors, shoe makers or designer drug manufacturers. As is apparent in the article, the Internet to most consumers = the browser and personalized content = e-mail. Tedeshi's artlce spends some time describing how RSS is sort of like the web and sort of like e-mail - but not really like either.
It's interesting to see the toe-in-the-water side of the pool from time to time, though. Aggregators are old technology to most readers of this blog. But I know I'd have to take out a few hours to explain it to most of my relatives.
Retail will change the course of RSS. I fear that it will change it in two negative ways. One, it will create so many RSS streams that people will become overwhelmed. Two, it will begin to foster distrust of RSS.
Obviously, both of these can be avoided. RSS is certainly the most opt-in-opt-out-able medium we have. But how long before they figure out how to add feeds when you make a transaction? I see some rocky times ahead.
Oddly enough, after telling everyone to look for the "R.S.S." tag, the New York Times feed below the article is marked XML.
Photo: Marianne Venegoni
Tags: RSS New York Times eCommerce web 2.0
This might sound paranoid, but my gut reaction after reading your first paragraph was: what if "they" figure out how to "push" an RSS feed automatically to my reader! AHHH
And then you gave a way with your idea of adding a feed with a transaction... But still, I wonder if someone is going to think up an even more insidious way to access my feed collection.
Posted by: Dustin | 06 March 2006 at 19:16