SmartFeed SimpleFeedSep29

Brooks Jordan 1 comments

Feedburner and SimpleFeed both manage feeds for companies that want to reach people through RSS. By managing your feed for you, they can provide data about the number of subscribers and the popularity of the items within the feed.

Anyone can "burn" a feed with Feedburner and get going right away, and it's a very useful service. But SimpleFeed has a different approach that gets you thinking. Apparently, they give a unique URL to each subscriber of the feed, meaning they're establishing a one-to-one relationship with that person. Then they use templates, sort of like an HTML template, to deliver richer information in the feed, which is customizable by the publisher, but also the subscriber. ("Yes, I do want this in my feed, no I don't want that.")

It's hard to imagine now when only up to six percent of Internet users use RSS that it will be a meaningful way to communicate with customers. But if meaningful adoption does happen, as companies like Microsoft add it to major products, then it could become the way to communicate with people who through behavioral analytics identify themselves, their preferences, and their deeper interests. Privacy concerns are less pressing with this type of open, two-way channel because, after all, the act of subscribing is the ulimate opt-in.

RSS has become broadly accepted by the technorati in 2006, but that's only the first step. In 2007 there will most likely be much wider adoption through the business community, and, in parallel, important innovations by companies like SimpleFeed and Feedburner that will make it exceedingly obvious why RSS is going to connect a lot of people in a very smart way.

Comments

Bill Flitter - October 28, 2006 12:45

Additionally, if the enterprise and publishers prove an ROI from RSS feeds, you better believe they will be promoting them. Publishers can incorporate ads or simply drive traffic back to their site where there they can create revenue opportunities.

Best,
Bill Flitter
Founder, Pheedo
RSS Marketing Solutions & Services
www.pheedo.com

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