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The RSS Promise for Internet Users
By Rok Hrastnik (c) 2005

The RSS promise for end-users is simple:

--> a unified one-stop-shop to consume online content,
without having to visit dozens of sites every day to see
what's new and without having their online subscriptions
interfere with their personal and business e-mail
communications;

--> complete control over their content consumption,
including a quick, easy and reliable mechanism to
unsubscribe from content they do not wish to receive;

--> the ability to receive breaking news as it becomes
available, without having to wait for a monthly, weekly or
daily recap sent to their e-mail addresses;

--> the certainty of actually receiving the content they
want, without the fear of it being stopped by spam filters
on the way;

--> the ability to receive rich-media content directly to
their desktops, including audio and video content;

--> the promise of providing the tools to make their lives
easier, including receiving critical content updates as
soon as they become available.

These points are not simple enhancements, but important
advancements that can fundamentally change how internet
content is consumed. Furthermore, these points themselves
prove why marketers need to start implementing RSS now!

To bring the point home, let us inspect some of the content
services already powered by RSS.

Library Elf: Making The Library Experience Easier
(http://libraryelf.com/)

Library Elf helps you keep track of your library accounts
in one place and received reminders, such as what library
material is due, overdue and ready for pickup. Library Elf
uses the power of RSS to help you forget about your library
accounts and instead be directly notified of the changes
you're waiting for, directly to your desktop.

Indeed: Helping Your Find The Right Job
(http://www.indeed.com/)

Indeed.com provides its visitors with job seeking results
from hundreds of sites and then makes the search results
accessible via RSS feeds. Users can subscribe to individual
search results, pertaining directly to their search
keywords to be notified immediately new jobs are available.

Flickr: Sharing Your Life In Picture
(http://www.flickr.com/)

Flickr is the most popular photography management and
sharing service on the web, enabling end-users to upload
their photos and then make them available to their friends,
associates and family through a wide assortment of content
delivery channels, including RSS. By subscribing to
individual Flickr feeds from their users, everyone can have
direct access to the latest life experiences from their
friends.

RSSCalendar: Sharing Your Events
(http://www.rsscalendar.com/)

rssCalendar.com allows individuals and companies to share
their personal or group calendars with the rest of the
world, letting everyone that matters know of where and what
they are doing next, delivering this information via
individual RSS feeds.

Coupons.com: Savings To Your Desktop
(http://www.coupons.com/)

Coupons.com brings the best deals and coupons to internet
end-users, helping them save money by discounted shopping.
As of late, they also started delivering coupons through
RSS feeds, giving their subscribers direct access to their
latest offerings.

PubSub.com: Tracking The World (http://www.pubsub.com)

PubSub.com is an amazing service that allows you to track
practically everything going on around the world by
matching your keywords with tens of thousands of online
content sources, and enabling you to subscribe to your
customized search results through customized RSS feeds.

RSSAuction.com: Tracking Your Purchase Interests
(http://rssauction.com/)

If you're a regular eBay user, you certainly want to keep
track of new products available, which precisely match your
interests. rssAuction.com helps users keep better track of
eBay by giving them a tool to first create a comprehensive
list of product requirements and then delivering the search
result through an RSS feed. As soon as new products
matching individual interests appear, the user is notified
of that through his RSS aggregator, giving him the ability
to start bidding immediately and without having to visit
eBay every day to find the right products.

Upcoming.org: Keeping Track Of Local And Social Events
(http://upcoming.org/)

>From the Upcoming.org website: "Upcoming.org is a
collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people
like you. Enter in the events you're attending, comment on
events entered by others, and syndicate event listings to
your own weblog. As Upcoming.org learns more about the
events you enjoy, it will suggest new events you never
would have heard about."

FeedBeep: The Ultimate "Time-To-Information" Tool
(http://www.feedbeep.com/)

Depending on who you are and your current life situation,
many content alerts are critical for you. If you're looking
for a job, you want to know immediately when a new one
matching your precise interests is available, and so on.
While RSS brings this information to your desktop, that
might not be fast enough. Feedbeep.com takes internet
content delivery one step further, by empowering users to
have their critical content updates delivered from an RSS
feed directly to their mobile phones via SMS.

RSS Empowers Consumers

The one thing all of these RSS-based or RSS-empowered
services have in common is that they empower consumers.

They empower them by getting the content that matters to
them delivered directly to their desktops or online content
aggregators, but still giving them the power to unsubscribe
within moments of not being satisfied with the content they
are receiving.

Even more so, these services empower consumers to create
social networks and easily share their information with
their friends, family and associates on a large scale.

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Rok Hrastnik is the author of »Unleash the Marketing &
Publishing Power of RSS«, acclaimed as the best and most
comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers by leading RSS
experts. The complete guide on RSS for marketers:
http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa11
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