The coming power of RSS
What's this RSS thing that nerd types go on about? Um, could try to explain it but it's best if the professionals do that, so follow this link and skill up. Simple, eh? Really simple. Anyway, the people providing that basic tutorial, Feedburner, recently raised $10 million in funding. The New York VC firm Union Square Ventures put up $7 million of that and the company makes its case rather passionately for its investment. Money quote:
Apple has already made subscribing to podcasts via RSS in iTunes "brain dead" simple. And Microsoft is going to make RSS subscriptions "native" in the upcoming Vista operating sytem. MyYahoo has made subscribing to RSS very close to "brain dead simple" in its web service. And others are working on this problem as well. We don't know if it will be one year, two years, or three years before "soccer moms, myspace kids, construction workers, and grandmothers" are using RSS every day, but it's going to happen.
Because RSS allows the user to control subscriptions and cannot be spammed, Union Square Ventures are not alone in the view that RSS is better than e-mail and will win the battle for "commercial messaging" — newsletters, marketing and all the other transactional stuff. If that should happen, that $7 million investment would look very smart indeed.
