With AOL and Yahoo potentially charging to guarantee email delivery, I suspect RSS will get more serious consideration from marketers. And how can it not? If this email deal holds up (from what I’ve read it’s not finalized), costs will skyrocket for many publishers ($2.5-$10 per thousand emails sent). My overall take on this is the arrangement sounds more little a way to squeeze out revenue as opposed to helping their customers. Regardless, it takes events like these to spur adoption of alternatives. In this case, RSS will be the big beneficiary.
Some other bloggers have stated similar opinions. Steve Rubel has an appropriate take on this:
That’s all folks. The door has officially closed on email marketing. Maybe this will drive more companies to start up opt-in RSS feeds and blogs that facilitate dialogue.
Raj at the The RSS Cases Blog has a more in-depth analysis of the situation as well as his thoughts on a system for RSS virtual email.
Fred Wilson also has a nice summary of the whole situation with a round up of related posts including his thoughts stating:
I suspect we’ve got a ways to go before RSS is truly mainstream. But it seems like AOL introducing a paid stamps mechanism into the email business model is getting people thinking about a way around that and RSS would be a damn good one.
Maybe this email pay-to-play situation will be a nice catalyst for RSS.
