Does RSS spell the end of email newsletters? Email is so widespread and easy to use, but the lack of spam and marketing make RSS very tempting: the RSS News Feed tells you that some website you like has just added something new. What more could you want?
There is just one thing about email you could prefer: it's much easier to save and archive the messages locally. You can stick a label or a star on a particular item from an RSS feed, but then you're depending on the item staying put on the owner's server. Despite this RSS is superior to an Email newsletter for many purposes:
- RSS is an unspammable medium and it's more secure than Email because you can't receive a virus (or worm) through an RSS channel. This is why RSS feeds don't get filtered by antispam filters (and blocked as spam by mistake);
- How many times have you tried to get removed from a mailing list (sometimes you never signed up for)? With RSS you are in full control of your subscription in real time and without having to trust an email newsletter "unsubscribe" feature;
- You can publish RSS feeds on a web page without doing anything to them, giving you a zero maintenance automatically updated information feed on your website.
- RSS allows instant organization. Instead of setting up dozens of complex rules to define which e-mails go to which folder, news aggregators have been designed to keep the "information overload" at a minimum.
- Your feed reader will present every RSS feed in a consistent and highly readable way. Unlike Emails, which are all individually formatted and don't always display very well.
Users will continue to think twice about sharing their E-mail address with anybody, even after any sort of new, more restrictive, "antispam legislation" is passed. The power of RSS is undeniable.
