At 10:15 AM +1030 11/27/03, Chris imposed structure on a stream of
electrons, yielding:
Email is being abused as a broadcast medium. By deprecating all mass
mailings, and going RSS (i.e. pull feeds), we will cut the rug out from
under the feet of so-called "legitimate bulk e-mailers". Such a thing
will no longer exist by definition. They will stick out like sore
thumbs. Legitimate communities of interest can use RSS or internal
usenet feeds or web-bords or whatever.
--
This sounds strikingly similar to the http push er push of a few years ago.
remember everyone would have an "active desktop" and news and stories of
interest would be pushed to the user.
Does any one remember how successful that was?
the "http push" was in fact a pull system, the user would pull on to his
desktop feeds (RSS) from their favourite sources
if it failed then, what's changed ?
If you are talking about PointCast and their fellow-travelers, you
are not talking about RSS, or at least not modern RSS which didn't
exist until 1999, but about proprietary technology and massively
foolish business plans reliant on people being eager to get ads that
they did not really choose to get. So what has changed is:
1. It's not a reality-free business plan designed to sucker some dumb
VC's and IPO buyers out of their investment capital to line the
pockets of a bunch of hucksters. It's not a business plan at all. No
one is trying to get rich by owning the idea or the tools, so no one
has to be a revenue source for those non-existent owners to
concentrate.
2. RSS is an existing open standard that people are already using and
migrating to now on their own, without anything like an RFC
recommending it or any huckster (unless you count Dave Winer)
selling it. It is already showing signs of being the future preferred
broadcast medium for marketers and others who want to minimize their
chance of ever being called spammers or being seen as intrusive.
3. The circa-1998 push systems were all essentially based on hacks of
HTML and HTTP, which were ill-suited to the task. RSS is a
purpose-built XML dialect, so there is greater fitness to the task.
4. RSS does not have anyone trying to make it a 'push' system.
--
Bill Cole
bill(_at_)scconsult(_dot_)com
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