Michael Stark of PostYourProperty.com,
whom I was lucky enough to meet at Ad:Tech in New York, sent me an email this
morning about how his sites were performing and mentioned that his RSS feed was
up and running. Always interested to see the practical implementations of RSS, I
went to his site to download his real estate feed of FSBO properties - something
which over 1,000 people downloaded in his first month online.
After placing the feed into my RSS reader and taking a look at a few of the
properties posted, it got me thinking that RSS is only limited by the creativity
of the feed itself. You could literally create an RSS feed of anything - not
just articles and not just news. Shopping sites can take advantage of RSS to
notify patrons of items on sale, even your favorite local restaurant or corner
bar could use RSS to create a feed of its daily menu or drink specials.
Again, the possibilities are endless. The problem however for those who consider
themselves less than 'Net savvy is that the majority of businesses of all sizes
still use email as a primary means of communication. Email however, has its
obvious limitations - it is not always received by the recipients because of
spam filters, or simply dated email addresses. So is Email going the way of the
buggy whip?
"Whether RSS may one day overtake email as the preferred mode of online
marketing is still being debated" said Mr. Stark. "My opinion is that once
Version 7 of Explorer debuts and takes hold, RSS will become very main-stream.
RSS presents an amazing opt-in channel to not only build branding and traffic,
but to constantly deliver updated information about one's interests and
business."
So is email dead? Not even close, but the prognosis appears to be negative.
Pete Prestipino
- WSM Managing Editor
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