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RE: [Asrg] 6. Proposals - depracate all list/bulk mailing andchange to RSS

At 10:15 AM +1030 11/27/03, Chris imposed structure on a stream of electrons, yielding:
   Email is being abused as a broadcast medium.  By deprecating all mass
 mailings, and going RSS (i.e. pull feeds), we will cut the rug out from
 under the feet of so-called "legitimate bulk e-mailers".  Such a thing
 will no longer exist by definition.  They will stick out like sore
 thumbs.  Legitimate communities of interest can use RSS or internal
 usenet feeds or web-bords or whatever.

 --


This sounds strikingly similar to the http push  er push of a few years ago.

remember everyone would have an "active desktop" and news and stories of
interest would be pushed to the user.

Does any one remember how successful that was?

the "http push" was in fact a pull system, the user would pull on to his
desktop feeds (RSS) from their favourite sources

if it failed then, what's changed ?
If you are talking about PointCast and their fellow-travelers, you are not talking about RSS, or at least not modern RSS which didn't exist until 1999, but about proprietary technology and massively foolish business plans reliant on people being eager to get ads that they did not really choose to get. So what has changed is:

1. It's not a reality-free business plan designed to sucker some dumb VC's and IPO buyers out of their investment capital to line the pockets of a bunch of hucksters. It's not a business plan at all. No one is trying to get rich by owning the idea or the tools, so no one has to be a revenue source for those non-existent owners to concentrate.

2. RSS is an existing open standard that people are already using and migrating to now on their own, without anything like an RFC recommending it or any huckster (unless you count Dave Winer) selling it. It is already showing signs of being the future preferred broadcast medium for marketers and others who want to minimize their chance of ever being called spammers or being seen as intrusive.

3. The circa-1998 push systems were all essentially based on hacks of HTML and HTTP, which were ill-suited to the task. RSS is a purpose-built XML dialect, so there is greater fitness to the task.

4. RSS does not have anyone trying to make it a 'push' system.


--
Bill Cole
bill@scconsult.com


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