I was reading an article today written by Kian Ann of Blogopreneur about RSS and Email. It’s an excellent piece and I recommend everyone read it that wants to understand the realities of corporations and their mentality behind the use of these two technologies.
The writer concludes:
My point here is this. People don’t like to change. The majority of the Internet population WILL NOT start using RSS readers overnight. I can’t say it won’t forever, but I’m saying it will take time for people to adopt new technology.
Basically, what Kian tells us is that companies are not yet ready to embrace the idea of RSS. I can remember back when a company I worked for would not even think of email because perhaps it was the work of bad people and they would find a way to perform a corporate coup and invade all of our secrets and put this huge company out of business. That is usually the way companies look at new technology. It scares them at first and then they move into it with "pilot programs" and "beta testing" and "roll outs" that over time make the use of the technology almost useless since the technology has changed so much in the amount of time it take them to adopt the use.Â
Our company is having the same issue with consulting companies on the transfer of their use of email over to RSS. Many of our larger clients have very large data bases of email address and other information they have acquired over a long period of time and they do a blast of a newsletter every week to thousands of their customers and clients. This is a wonderful communication tool I agree. In its day, Newsletters through email was a valuable tool and frankly it still is as companies begin to learn more about how to track the metrics behind its use.
Our advice to these companies is not to discontinue the practice of their email blasts of newsletters and press releases, but to enhance their use and usability and reach with the implementation of RSS. We too find ourselves substituting RSS and email sometimes as does the writer above, but soon we will be all touting the huge success we get with RSS campaigns and email will be something that we cannot even remember using. Remember that fax machine in the corner? How about that rotary phone? Okay maybe those are bad examples but technology moves faster and more intelligently than it used to and it is up to companies to work hard to keep with that pace.
Tags: Kian Ann, Blogopreneur, RSS, Email, technology, blogging, web 2.0
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Excellent article.
I liked your remarks
“Remember that fax machine in the corner? How about that rotary phone?”
Excellent analogy.