E-mail Newsletters Switching To RSS

prostoalex writes "The wide spread of unsolicited e-mails is leading publishers and site owners towards subscription-based RSS, the InternetNews.com article says. Chris Pirillo from LockerGnome is quoted saying that people just do not subscribe to free e-mail newsletters anymore, making a broad assumption that anyone offering them would be a spammer. This short article on About.com also argues for the RSS as preferred format for newsletters, site headlines and all sorts of updates that were e-mailed to customers before."

Re:hmm

[Xformer]

RSS = Really Simple Syndication (or some variation of that)

What is syndication, but a "subscription" to something that is available to the public (or a limited subset thereof)? Pull or push (as in email) mechanism, doesn't really matter.

Re:hmm

[Trejkaz]

When I think "subscription", I think something more like Publish/Subscribe. The community at large is screaming for this to work via various instant messaging protocols, it would make a lot of sense to make an RSS extension to Jabber so you didn't have to pull a stack of books off the shelf just to read the last page.

Amphetadesk

[starling]

I've found it a great way to keep track of all the RSS feeds out there. It's been stable for a while, but a good /.ing might spur them to add some new features ;)

Here's the home page : amphetadesk [disobey.com]

Re: Conditional Gets save bandwidth

[sgarrity]

Most RSS readers support HTTP's Conditional GET mechanism, which only downloads the full file if the modified date in the header is different than your last version. This means you can check for updates with tiny (~200byte) requests. For more info, see HTTP Conditional Get for RSS Hackers [pastiche.org].

eliminates an obstacle to digital postage

[bcrowell]

People have recognized for a long time that the basic cause of spam is that spamming is free, as opposed to other forms of marketing that cost money to the sender. A sensible response has obviously been to make the sender of an e-mail pay money [hashcash.org].

Some objections to this have been (1) how do you process the payments without giving control over the internet to some evil corporation? (2) it's impractical to redesign the e-mail protocols and infrastructure, (3) mailing list operators can't pay to send every e-mail. Well, #1 is obviated by schemes like hashcash, where there's no real money involved. Re #2, this RSS example shows that the e-mail infrastrucure can and will be replaced, and there are ways to do it without having to make everybody change over to a new system overnight -- it can be done piecemeal. The RSS system may also show that #3 is not such a big deal, because maybe newsletters shouldn't go through the same channels as e-mail. (Note that the US postal service doesn't deliver newspapers.) Also, #3 was kind of silly anyway, because people can have a whitelist, and exempt people on their whitelist from paying to send them e-mail.

Matters a lot.

[shamel]

There is a big difference.

For example a web page is "pull" meaning that you have to request it in order to have it. You know the address of the server you request info from.

An email is "push" because anyone can send you email if they know your address.

Pull is better in the sense that it permits you to only accept communication from the publishers you selected. You could do the same for email and only accept mail from ppl and publishers in your address book for example but in some case you do want "unkowns" to contact you. Whereas you positively dont want "unknowns" to contact you regarding "newsletters" and such.

You might say then that we would be better off then reading the "newsletter" (or whatever) off the publishers web site. The thing is that RSS enables you to aggregate all those items from different sources together as opposed to going to all the websites.

Re:eliminates an obstacle to digital postage

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the US postal service doesn't deliver newspapers
Actually it can, and it does. You can order a newspaper from anywhere and guess who delivers it? Not the local paperboy...

Re:How does RSS scale?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're doing your RSS smart, and generate static pages to be server while checking and sending proper conditional headers, then it really doesn't require that many resources.

Re:Web-based readers?

[JPVann]

Try "Feed Demon" from the author of Topstyle and Homesite. It is in beta right now, but very stable and a killer app!

http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/

Essentially creates "newspapers" of RSS feeds you are interested in - great product.

Re:damn spammers ruining everything

[daveo0331]

If I went and dumped one billion pieces of junk mail into the mail box at the post office, intervention by the post office keeps it from automatically sending that junk mail from going to every person out there--they would just trash it and probably come arrest or fine me.

Actually, the post office would happily collect your $370 million in postage (minus whatever the bulk mail discount is) and send the letters to their destination. The only thing that keeps postal junk mail in check is that the sender pays, unlike spam where the recipient pays.

Amphetadesk-Painful.

[Anonymous Coward]

" I've found it a great way to keep track of all the RSS feeds out there. It's been stable for a while, but a good /.ing might spur them to add some new features ;)"

1-You need a web server.
2-It's hard to set up.
3-Upgrading is painful.
4-You have to run a seperate program (which you have to cron to get automatic updates) to get your updates, then run the main one to display them.

Re:eliminates an obstacle to digital postage

[DragonMagic]

Another big problem is that many spammers no longer use their own or paid-for/acquired servers, but viruses, trojans and exploited servers. This would not stop the spam from causing traffic problems on the web.

Re:Amphetadesk

[magores]

I tried Amphetadesk. Nice deal if you like your RSS feeds in a web page.

I stumbled across a 3-pane reader that I like MUCH more than a web page interface.

Try SharpReader [sharpreader.net] if you are are a Windows person. Worthy contender, IMHO.

Re:How does RSS scale?

[Feztaa]

However, I do question the ability of RSS to scale.

You must have some serious reservations about the scalability of HTML, then :)

RSS is just a way of paraphrasing the content of an HTML site, in a standard way that can be incorporated into other websites/clientside RSS readers. Reloading an RSS file once every hour is less bandwidth-intensive than reloading the HTML counterpart every hour.

Re:A combination of methods

[Reverberant]

Not all email that is received in a spirit of hostility is spam, and sometimes, even if the receiver hates the message, they have to read it. But that's only if they get it. RSS significantly raises the barrier of entry, particularly for people without lots of Net savvy..

Agreed. However, I would point out that Microsoft has recently started offering RSS feeds [microsoft.com]. If they find it to be a useful technology, I'll bet we'll see an RSS aggregator integrated into Outlook or MSIE. If that happens, the barrier of entry will be significantly reduced.

Of course that brings about the question of whether or not having MS in the RSS client game is a good thing, but I'll worry about that later...

Re:Listservs will never die

[Meowing]

Distribution can be controlled using HTTP auth and perhaps SSL. The aggregators aren't really that complicated, and the interfaces are improving over time. Wtht the one I use, all it takes is to drag one of those little orange icons to the dock, I maybe type in a name for the feed, and its done.

Re:There is no push

[Hard_Code]

When you poll your IMAP or POP server, you poll YOUR server, not everybody else's. That's why it scales well. That said, RSS docs are typically very small, and HTTP already has built-in cache support through the HEAD action, so all indications point to it not being a problem.

Looking to try an aggregator? Try Bloglines

[markfletcher]

Our web-based aggregator, Bloglines, is an easy way to try out aggregation. No need to download and install a program. We have a search engine and a list of top RSS feeds to make finding syndicated content easier. See http://www.bloglines.com [bloglines.com] for more info.

Sigh

[rkuris]

Well, I can tell you from personal experience that the LockerGnome folks are not a good resource for telling you what works and what doesn't.

When I first complained that SpamAssassin blocked their newsletter, and merely asked if they could look into it, I was laughed at, and they tried to convince me that I needed to whitelist them or, in their words, "...learn how to use your spam blocking software".

Ironically, months later, they signed up for Habeas signatures [habeas.com] on their emails.

It's interesting that NOW they decide to look into RSS as a solution. I wonder if it is because Habeas isn't working.

Re:Listservs will never die

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, what? Just make a per-user feed. As in, the user pays his fee, then goes to a page that says: HERE'S YOUR FEED: http://example.com/hot-weekly-tips/5c5cdbf2cf58fbd 8

Then not only can do you control distribution BETTER than email (last I checked, there wasn't a "forward to all my friends" option in NetNewsWire), you can also SEE when the users access the feed. The users can completely customize their feed. And when the user is tired of it he can unsubscribe with a mouse click.

I think RSS is MUCH better than email for this purpose.

As for your "not everyone can grok" comment, well, that's not a very good argument against an emerging technology. As soon as Microsoft puts it in the OS, it will be a standard.

Livejournal

[samael]

Personally I use Livejournal as my newsreader. It's got pretty much the perfect system for me, as I can set up the layout how I like and it does all the checking for me. I can also check my news feeds from wherever I happen to be.

You can see the results at http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/friends/news
or the comics I receive over RSS at
http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/friends/co mics

Re:Somewhat good.

[Crayon Kid]

Exactly. RSS works just like HTTP because it is HTTP. It's just like visiting a website except that you use a feed reader instead of a browser, and that the feeder usually comes with an automatic refresh feature.

FWIW, you can watch RSS feeds with any recent browser just as well (well, Mozilla and IE, haven't tried Opera), if you don't mind being shown a tree of XML tags.

If the XML document has an XSLT transformation sheet associated with it, it will be displayed as nice HTML so even that isn't a problem. Check this out [w3.org] to see an example.

The browser is still the original RSS feed reader.

Re:Realization at last?

[amcguinn]

The whole point of RSS is that, unlike email, it is not push.

In fact, "push" vs "pull" is not very descriptive. You have a newsletter, a publisher who controls the content, and subscribers who read it. There is only one important question: where is the subscription recorded?

There are effectively three models:

1. The subscription is recorded in the subscriber's brain. The subscriber has to make a point of going after the content. This is the model for web pages. I am "subscribed" to publications like The Risks Digest [ncl.ac.uk] and Crypto-gram [counterpane.com] because I make a point of viewing the web pages regularly. This model is of little value to a lot of publishers, because their content is not valuable enough that users will make a point of keeping up in this way
2. The subscription is recorded in the publisher's system. This is how email newsletters work. It's fine for the publisher, but unsatisfactory for the reader as he can get subscribed to things he doesn't want. Separating bona-fide subscribed content from spam is very difficult for filtering systems, and the result is that delivery failure rates are rising. This is where we are now, this is where we want to get away from.
3. The subscription is recorded in the subscriber's software. This is the ideal. I can choose to subscribe to something, and no-one can make me subscribe to anything I don't want. The subscribed content will appear in front of me without my needing to remember it or pick it out of a list of a hundred browser bookmarks. RSS falls into this category.

My pet theory is that there is another method that fits in the third category: email retrieved directly from the publisher's system by the subscriber's system using POP3. I subscribe to the content by adding an account to my mail client with the publisher's POP server, and a username of my choice. Doing a "get email" on my mail client will bring down the newsletter along with my other email. (IMAP or NNTP could be used the same way). The advantage of this over RSS is that the clients are already widespread, although ideally they would be enhanced to support this model more smoothly.