This article makes 2 pretty good points why RSS is better than email for some communication. It focusses on the classic email newsletter format. Let me elaborate….
Spam has changed the nature of email. There’s an industry that’s trying to get stuff into your InBox (spammers) and another industry that’s making tools to get the right things into your InBox (anti-spam tools). With people publishing newsletters before spam, they knew their subscribers would get the information. But now, depending on the anti-spam software (because every service practically has to have it) that newsletter may not make it to the subscriber. Since RSS is a dedicated channel outside of email, once you subscribe to an RSS feed, you will get the information. There’s no chance that I can foresee of something like spam messing up RSS — that subscription is a dedicated channel to the information source.
Mobility. People change their email addresses. Sometimes they change them due to spam overload. Unless the update their subscription with the newsletter mailer, they won’t be getting the information. Since RSS is independent of email, you can be as fluid with your email address as you like. But can’t you lose your RSS subscriptions if your computer crashes or you change computers? Yes, but the same goes for your bookmarks. If they’re worth saving maybe we should backup our settings once in a while.
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