Just stumbled accross Jon Udell’s column about RSS and public relations, linked from Dave Winer’s Scripting News. Jon and Dave (and I) are excited about the continued growth of RSS. But I think the real potential lies in using RSS as a replacement for bulk email. By itself, RSS is just a cool web syndication tool. But in conjunction with tools like NewsGator, RSS “feels like” email. BUT. Since it doesn’t require the user to give out an email address, you don’t have the spam problem, which means publishers don’t have to worry about being blocked by overzealous black lists.
It would be awesome to see the PR industry get behind RSS, because marketing won’t be far behind. Now we just need for Microsoft, Eudora et al to incorporate RSS newsfeeds directly into their email clients.