The Ubiquitous RSS
I had breakfast with a client yesterday who runs a very large interactive practice that services fortune 100-1000 companies. Over the course of the meal, we discussed email marketing, podcasting, blogging, and RSS, mainly the current state of each but more importantly where its all going. We also talked about how interested his clients and prospects have become in these mediums. They are starting to “get” how they can become key parts of their marketing communications. Out of our discussion, the one topic that really threaded everything together was just how big RSS is now, and how big it will be in the future. The power of RSS in all of these mediums is such a key factor - its the new open channel of flowing information. The power of what a marketer can do with a feed or many feeds is becoming endless, and most importantly transmissions are seamless and clean. Simply put, when you look at the landscape you see that RSS is popping up everywhere.
Then I get back to Baltimore and read that Sony has just released RSS support as an upgrade for the PSP, timely:
“RSS (Really Simple Syndication, version 2.0) functionality has been added for audio streams. PSP owners connected to the Internet can now easily check through Web sites for updated streaming audio content such as podcasts”
All of this is no surprise to me, I along with all of the other early adopters have been pretty bullish on our bets that RSS would eventually explode in the mainstream (If you have been using an aggregator like Bloglines and subscribing to RSS feeds for over a year, consider yourself an early adopter of RSS compared to the mass population). For me, its completely changed the way I use the web - I am subscribed to just over 130 feeds that I pay attention to every day, and via RSS I receive text content, MP3 enclosures (Podcasts) and now video. All push, no pull - now tell me thats not powerful.
The real interesting part, is the practical application of RSS, and implementing marketing programs and strategies around it. Thats where the fun is. My client and I brainstormed lots of ideas on how marketers could make use of RSS feeds. When some of these come to fruition I will be sure to post about them. In the meantime, watch RSS closely, and if your a marketer and its not on your radar yet, push it towards the top of the list.