The Next Online Marketing Frontier

Blogging has arrived...

[June 11, 2003 issue of WordBiz Report]

By Derek Scruggs
Contributing Writer

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a world where:

Visitors to your Web site can signup for your newsletter...

• in one click
  
  
• without having to give you their email addresses
  
  
• comfortable in the knowledge that you can't sell their addresses to spammers
  
  
• knowing they can unsubscribe with a single click
  
  
• and the poor postmaster at the subscriber's ISP never has to worry about blocking or unblocking your feeds because your feeds never touch the ISP's servers
  
  
• and you never have to try to convince said postmaster to stop blocking you
  
  Compelling, isn't it? And until recently, a fantasy.
  
  But there is a new technology on the scene that may make this world a reality. It's called RSS.
  

RSS is an emerging standard that could bring significant changes to the online marketing landscape. Though it's still early days and there are many paths RSS could take, I'd like to outline one potential direction and how it might benefit yBut first, you may be wondering…

What is RSS?

RSS is an XML-based document format. Which begs the question, what is XML? Well, that's a whole topic in itself, but the 30-second version is that XML is kind of like HTML, but instead of making documents attractive, it allows computers to read documents more intelligently.

For example, a well-defined XML format could allow your computer automatically to search multiple auction sites and aggregate the results into a single summary document for you to browse at your leisure.

That said, XML is not magical all by itself. Programmers create XML formats for many different purposes, primarily for allowing computers to exchange data from different applications without having to have every possible application installed.

If you use Quicken to download transactions from your bank, the bank is sending those transactions in a standard XML format that many personal finance applications - not just Quicken - can understand.

There are many XML formats out there.

What makes RSS special is:

1. Simplicity - An RSS document is only slightly more difficult to create than a Web page, and it will get easier as better RSS authoring tools come to market.
   
   
2. Richness - An RSS document can incorporate almost all of the bells and whistles found on cutting edge Web sites.
   
   
3. Flexibility - An RSS document can be used any many different contexts. Though this article will focus on its use for online marketing, the fact that many different applications are beginning to adopt it leads to…
   
   
4. Though it's not yet ubiquitous, many early adopters are downloading and installing news aggregators. A news aggregator is a specialized application, similar to a Web browser or an email program, that is specifically designed to view RSS files (commonly called "feeds" or "channels"). These early adopters use them to do everything from reading blogs to monitoring software projects
   
   
5. Trackability - as with Web pages and email, users' interaction with RSS documents can generally be tracked and analyzed to a great degree
   
   

Old is New Again

One interesting thing about RSS is that it's not new. In fact, it's rather old by Web standards, having originally been developed in 1997 for use with Netscape's vaunted "push" strategy. (Remember push?) So why is it suddenly getting so much attention?

First and foremost, blogging. The blogging phenomenon has been going on for the last few years, but in the past year or so the mainstream press has taken notice and, in many cases, co-opted blogging as another information distribution channel.

Notable media personalities such as Andrew Sullivan and Mickey Kaus have broadened their audiences via blogs.

What does that have to do with RSS? Simple - all major blogging tools support the creation of RSS files, which in turn makes it easier to syndicate your blog on sites such as Moreover and Syndic8.

Since most bloggers want a broad audience, syndication is a no-brainer decision. And since blogging tools make RSS syndication very simple, there's been an explosion of RSS feeds as a result.

If so many people are publishing, somebody must be reading. RSS feeds are ideal for information junkies, who use news aggregators to browse headlines and blogs.

There are quite a few aggregators on the market. Some are Web-based and position themselves as "super aggregators" that allow news addicts to browse headlines all over the world on one Web site. Other aggregators are software products that users download and us to be more efficient in reading blogs and other publications.

Early Adopters

In the world of personal computers, the "power user" is often synonymous with "early adopter." The rapid innovation that is currently going on with RSS and aggregators is reminiscent of the early days on the Web, when Netscape unleashed a revolution in the guise of a graphical Web browser. Though initially a favorite toy of the geek set, the browser soon became ubiquitous and, along with email, became a motivating factor for later adopters to join the party.

RSS is still in the early adopter phase, but I believe ubiquity is not far off. To see why I feel this way, download a free trial of NewsGator, a news aggregator that integrates with Microsoft Outlook. If you're like me, you'll quickly become comfortable with the idea of getting feeds delivered to your inbox. If you're an information junkie like me, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Mainstream Acceptance

It does not take a rocket scientist to envision AOL, MSN, Earthlink etc. jumping on this bandwagon and offering something like NewsGator for free to all of their customers. AOL is rumored to have devoted more than 100 programmers to developing their own blogging system. If you're going to offer blogs, why not also offer a tool that makes it easier to read them? Once this happens, look out!

Then Again, Maybe Not

What I described above is one possible outcome of the RSS phenomenon. It is by no means guaranteed. But if you look at the evolution of the Web and email marketing, you may notice a familiar pattern:

Limited-use technology -> early adopters -> mainstream acceptance -> ubiquity

RSS has reached the second stage of this lifecycle. Given the many benefits RSS offers to end users, it's hard to imagine a reason why it would not continue its march to the mainstream.