« PROTEST EU software patents | Main | Mayor Ken's culture questionnaire »
September 03, 2003
RSS vs Spam
Internetnews.com poses the question - Is RSS an answer to the global spam crisis?.
"E-mail is dead, period," declares Chris Pirillo, the Internet entrepreneur who distributes about 400,000 e-mail newsletters weekly. "I don't care what kind of legislation goes through, people aren't signing up for newsletters anymore. People are assuming that every e-mail publisher is a spammer."
I agree but it is going to take a few more rounds of chaos before this opinion takes off. I like my information raw but that certainly isn't to everyone's taste. Opposition to XML content feeds comes from publishers worried about how their precious brands are propagated. Why rely on business agreements when you can have a set of technology handcuffs in place. But look where we are. "User friendly" net space is a quagmire of spam, viruses, walled gardens and proprietary coded fiefdoms. There are no XML Schemas for spin, marketspeak and vapourware so how on earth could you conceive of stripping back your jumble to its erm... logical structure. XML is logical to us techies but it's way too easy to publish glossy gunk. If the odd trojan horse slips into the packaging, well... so be it. For now.
Ultimately the audience has to want RSS and its children and understand the benefits. Every new viral outbreak increases the likelihood of that happening.
Services don't have to be infected in order to be labelled as virus carriers. Witness the recent outbreaks of W32.Sobig.f. The virus happily spoofs email addresses it finds on the infected machine. It took me a while to realise what was going on as emails started to come in saying "An email from your address contained a virus". In actual fact, none of my systems were infected. It was someone else's problem technically. It still affects your credibility.
RSS is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to online content syndication. New XML formats are inevitable but the power of RSS isn't the structure, it's the paradigm. Critics who dismiss "Really Simple Syndication", because it was never designed to handle much beyond headline and teaser content feeds, miss the point. The relationship between publisher and audience is far more interesting than the technical specification. Anything that empowers an audience is exciting. Especially when its aligned with the technical architecture of the medium itself. All good stuff. A slow burner.
Don't expect to read much about this on Reuters or Bloomberg. To quote a Reuters spokesperson last year "The Semantic Web is a flawed concept". Why? Reduced marketshare in a world where the average Jo can construct a bespoke information feed from free resources.
Posted by .M. at September 3, 2003 11:50 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://thequality.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/137