white paper

RSS: The Next

Big Thing On Line

July, 2004 RSS presents a huge opportunity to create communication ef-

RSS is in its infancy—the earliest stage of its adoption—but
the velocity and mass of its adoption confirms it to be one of
the most important developments in the distribution of media
content in a number of years.
ficiencies inside the enterprise by usurping the politics that bog
email down and expediting the process associated with team
communications. Additionally, mass adoption of RSS will
challenge marketers to increase the value and quantity of the
content built to influence prospects.

We strongly believe that RSS is the web’s RSS is potentially What is RSS?
Next Big Thing. It is potentially most dis- most disruptive to Tracking information from a number of web-
ruptive to email and applications relying on sites is becoming an increasingly difficult
email, though it is important to understand
email, though it is task. Forcing visits to favorite pages everyday
that RSS is not at all likely to replace email. important to to see if any updates have occurred is cumber-
New media rarely ever replace old. Indeed some and tedious. Remembering what a user
understand that
some RSS aggregators need a traditional has read and where they read it is often a dif-
email client to function. RSS is not at all ficult––if not impossible––job
likely to replace
RSS adoption will aid in the active, real-time, RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site
automated filtering of an ever-growing supply
email. New media Summary) is an XML-based format for eas-
of content. Smarter content filters will drive rarely ever ily distributing and aggregating Web con-
up the value of prospect access. As consumers tent (such as news headlines). Users deter-
replaces old.
take more active control of the messaging and mine their favorite websites and a properly
content they consume, reaching them gets configured RSS aggregator will syndicate
tougher. Concurrently, as search engine optimization looses its selected lists of hyperlinks and headlines, along with other
mystery, popularity and relevancy vie for dominance as content information about the websites, then display the contents on
searches become more automated and span a number of differ- the user’s desktop at regular intervals. The user decides to fol-
ent communication channels. low the link or not.
 Page 2 RSS: The Next Big Thing On Line
Figure 1 – Content Syndication Process through RSS
RSS works when a Web site makes an XML feed, or the file con-
taining news items and their descriptions, available publicly in a
common format. Once a feed is available, aggregators (programs
that manage and check for updates on a list of hyperlinks) can
fetch the file and display the content directly to the end user
(Figure 1). Content syndication is not limited only to PC, but
can also notify users of updates on a myriad of other devices.
Benefits of RSS
RSS makes information timelier—and more valuable. Key
benefits include:
1. Fast updating by auto-retrieving summaries of the latest
content. RSS aggregators can be set to check at regular in-
tervals for updates on the user’s favorite sites.
2. Less time spent “surfing”. Content comes to the user, rather
than the user having to go to the content. More content can
be consumed in less time.
3. Avoid extraneous information on a company’s web page, in-
cluding the ads, menus, etc.
4. No need to provide an email address to selected information
provider. Personal information remains private and secure.
RSS cannot be used as a spam channel as the source of each
news item received is known.
5. For the content publisher and marketer, it provides an-
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other channel to build brand awareness and improves the
site/user relationship
Current State of RSS
RSS is in the earliest stages of adoption. Still, there is enough
evidence that it is gaining wide acceptance today to conclude
it will be adopted massively. The number of sites offering RSS
feeds is growing geometrically and includes large content pro-
viders like BBC, ESPN, Amazon.com, and Yahoo News. Its
usage grows by thousands of new end users everyday. The pop-
ularity of RSS has led to the announcements of new versions.
Soon, we expect to see listings indicating support for RSS 0.9x,
1.x, 2.x as well as versions integrating rich media
Currently, aggregators are the most used RSS tool. There are
several offerings available for free or for a minimal charge.
These aggregators are typically backwards-compatible with
older versions of RSS. Aggregators also choose from two con-
ventional means of displaying content. One school of web
aggregators (like Amphetadesk or Meerkat) make the view
available in a web page; desktop aggregators (like Sharpreader
or Feedemon) deliver feeds through stand-alone, dedicated
software on the user’s desktop.
 Page 3 RSS: The Next Big Thing On Line white paper

Capabilities vs. Cost vs. Convenience Comparison

12.00
NewzCrawler
10.00
Active Refresh
News Gator
Convenience

8.00 ScopeWare NewsWatcher

AmphetaDesk
FeedDemon
FeedReader Tristana SharpReader
6.00

4.00

Syndic8
2.00
MyNetscape
Meerkat
0.00
0.00 2.50 5.00 7.50 10.00

Capabilities

Figure 2 – Capabilities vs. Cost vs. Convenience Map (Size represents relative exposure)

Best in Breed Providers
There is a glut of RSS aggregators. Remarkably, the competi- ber of market models when compared in all 4 categories. This
tion between aggregators continues to grow
hotter, suggesting we are not alone in see-
ing the RSS space as the “Next Big Thing” -
-similar in scope and adoption to what email
was in 1998. Still, leaders have emerged in
this early phase.
Mediathink undertook a research initiative
to study 12 of the most commonly avail-
able aggregators on the Internet. These ag-
continuous investment Aggregators available at no cost have been
gregators included web and desktop-based
software and free and priced offerings. We
compared aggregators on 18 different crite-
ria spanning 4 major categories – capabili-
ties (features), convenience, maturity, and
cost. The components of these categories are
found in the footnotes.
Our research demonstrated that aggregators are testing a num-
is indicative of the predictable “Land Grab”
There is a glut of associated with any new technology that sees
RSS aggregators. aggressive user adoption. While a few differ-
entiate themselves in terms of features and
With a number of ease of use, others have basic features and are
aggregators cropping available at no cost. For reference, a compar-
up every day, we ison map of all the aggregators we tested is
believe that only shown above (Figure 2).
in innovation will shown using small circles. Depending on
help differentiate the business situation, companies can decide
to put appropriate weights on these criteria.
aggregators.
We, however, believe that overall cost is in-
consequential. Even aggregators that charge
a fee are easily affordable in any professional
context. Therefore, aggregators that differ-
entiate themselves in terms of features and convenience come
out at the top of our list.
 Page 4 RSS: The Next Big Thing On Line white paper

Capabilities vs. Convenience vs Maturity Comparison marketing communications deployed

12.00
with it.
Active Refresh NewzCrawler
Impact of RSS on Email
Ease of Use - Convenience

10.00 We believe RSS is a disruptive technology,

ScopeWare NewsWatcher poised to challenge email’s monopolistic
FeedDemon
8.00 role as the best and preferred distribu-
FeedReader
News Gator tion/subscription mechanism for news-
AmphetaDesk
6.00 Tristana SharpReader letter publishers on the Internet. Mail-
boxes overflow with spam. Deliverability
4.00
is in crisis. Users have significantly re-
duced their reading of commercial email
Syndic8 or have imposed spam blockers, (which
2.00
MyNetscape often block both legitimate mail as well
Meerkat
as junk). RSS, on the other hand, is 100
0.00
0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00 9.00 10.00
percent opt-in. A recipient must proac-
Capabilities tively choose to receive a feed. There’s
no way to send unsolicited content via
Figure 3 – Capabilities vs. Cost vs. Maturity Map RSS. RSS has no issues with blacklists,
spam complaints, and other nuisances
that even the most scrupulously ethical
We also compared the maturity of different aggregators against marketers deal with on a regular basis.
their capabilities and ease of use (Figure3). Less mature aggregators
have been shown through small sized circles. Here, a few aggrega-
tors perform poorly, while many are in close proximity, suggesting Active Refresh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
a significant amount of market parity around the offerings.
Amphetadesk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Both maps, confirm the fact that aggregators in the top right cor-
Feeddemon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ner (Active Refresh, FeedDemon, Newsgator, and Newzcrawler) Feedreader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
are very similar to each other but very distinct from the rest. Meerkat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
With a number of other aggregators cropping up every day, we MyNetscape. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
believe that only continuous investment in innovation will help
Newsgator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
differentiate aggregators. So far, aggregators in the top right cor-
ner seem to have done the best job differentiating themselves. Newzcrawler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Scopeware Newswatcher. . . . . .
Implications for Marketing Sharpreader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Marketers can reasonably see both salvation and threat in RSS.
Syndic8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Salvation comes in the form of easy distribution of online con-
tent. The RSS threat lies in its ability to draw attention away Tristana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
from email and other direct marketing channels. While RSS
Figure 4 Overall Ratings
can make marketing messages more relevant, it also makes
them more easily filtered, potentially shrinking the reach of
 Page 5 RSS: The Next Big Thing On Line
Figure 5 – Intra-Enterprise Content Syndication through RSS
In fact, RSS can replace email for internal communication pur-
poses too (Figure 5). All of the information relating to team-
work and assignments could be (and in some cases is) fed from
a non-public page on an enterprise’s site. That private page
could generate an RSS channel and send the relevant URL/ad-
dress channel to all of the appropriate people on a given team.
Once team members have set-up their news aggregators to
read that special address that has been provided, they all have
a way to receive any of the information a manager may want
them to have, without the need for traditional multi-recipi-
ent email. Further, this communication process eliminates the
often-crushing politics around a message’s set of CC’s: the re-
cipients are approved to receive anything they are permitted to
subscribe to.
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Impact on Messaging
RSS adoption will drive increasing message credibility. Every
RSS message will need to possess content the reader wants
to receive. Promising discounts and special promotions may
fail to work in many instances (consumer packaged goods
and other frequent or repeat purchase items may be the only
exceptions); in most cases marketing messages will require
increasingly more valuable content to motivate readers to re-
ceive a marketer’s RSS feed.
Impact of RSS on Search Engines
Monitoring the burgeoning number of Weblog postings can
be vital for competitive intelligence or product research. Blog-
ging has placed a new set of demands on search engines. Lead-
ing search engines like Google and Yahoo are experimenting
with ideas to search RSS feeds. For marketers, it could mean
 Page 6 RSS: The Next Big Thing On Line white paper

that search engine optimization once restricted only to web without even having a TV set. One downside is that illegiti-
pages, are almost certain to include RSS feeds too. mate uses of this system would obviously abound, and tradi-
tional TV networks may need to check copyright infringers.
Future of RSS: Rich Media and Other Platforms
RSS is going mainstream. Companies continue to experiment Other Platforms
with ways to use and distribute RSS feeds. Changes in the fu-RSS is not limited to web pages––far from it. RSS feeds have
been popping up in many services. The lightweight nature of its
ture of content are likely to be driven by RSS and devices used
to capture RSS feeds. code makes it ideally suited for new devices. For example, instant
messaging services are well-suited for delivering headlines to us-
Rich Media ers, as is the Short Message Service (SMS) for GSM-based mo-
RSS is a simple standard for moving con- bile phones. By acting as value-add between
tent across the Web. The next step in its The next step in the content providers, third-party service
evolution is a standardized way to syndi- its evolution is a providers, and the end user, RSS can pro-
cate rich media and broadband content. vide a very simple way of creating thousands
standardized way to of relevant content products in a number of
Currently, users might download a few
songs and listen to them on MP3 play-
syndicate rich media different forms, customized to the device
ers. A rich media RSS standard (RM RSS) and broadband content. and to the user.
would allow publishers to make such con- We will soon see TiVo
tent available online in the same way news or a TiVo-like device
articles are today. Instead of simply stream- Who Needs RSS?
ing audio or video, we see users enabled
connected to the web RSS holds benefits for almost everyone,
to create personal broadband “channels” and subscribed to all be it a low-demand dial-up user needing
to use as little bandwidth as possible, or a
with the RM RSS viewers. Essentially, we types of rich content.
see TiVo or a TiVo-like device connected large content provider looking for a wider,
to the web and subscribed to all types of deeper relationship with its readership.
rich content. This also opens the door for
more inventive content. Consumers relieved of the tedium Most valuable, however, is that RSS could
of suffering through irrelevant content might be willing to hold huge potential for people engaged in reading a large num-
experiment with new formats and types of content. ber of weblogs. Work teams engaged in long-term projects re-
quiring constant communication amongst an ever-changing
It is also believed that if RSS gets integrated with programs group of members can benefit from its immediacy and securi-
like Bit Torrent (efficient peer-to-peer large file sharing pro- ty. News providers and companies that want to increase brand
grams similar to KaZaa), we would have the functionality of awareness and have ongoing need for mass internal communi-
TiVo on our personal computer. We would no longer be sit- cation will deploy RSS as IT managers become more familiar
ting in front of our TV set at an inconvenient time waiting to with the effect RSS has on network deployments and end user
watch our favorite show. Instead, Bit Torrent will distribute PC’s.
files of the show just a few hours after the show has been
aired, and RSS aggregators will update us on new files created Challenges for RSS
and distributed through Bit Torrent. We can, then, choose to Any discussion of RSS would be incomplete if it did not men-
open the file or the link at our convenience on our computer tion the challenges associated with it. As mentioned earlier,
RSS is still in the earliest stages of adoption. Even when a mar-
 Page 7 RSS: The Next Big Thing On Line white paper

keter has great content to offer, the abil- While RSS can facilitate Mediathink Summary
ity to create awareness about the content We see RSS as the single best method avail-
easy distribution of
remains an obstacle. Further, it may be able to receive information from selected
impossible to track how many subscribers online content and make sources. RSS possesses the unique ability to
are receiving a given RSS feed, unless there marketing messages more eliminate the usual chores of search, naviga-
is a registration mechanism. RSS also lim- relevant, it also makes tion, and interruptive marketing avoidance
its the publisher in the way their content currently required to receive most of today’s
them more easily filtered,
is formatted and organized. Some have valuable news content. By its virtues, we
even argued that RSS hogs a large chunk potentially shrinking the see RSS disrupting email’s current hold on
of bandwidth, as aggregators continually reach of marketing point-to-point communication and growing
pound news feeds from a number of sites communications its share of user attention faster than any web
several times a day. technology preceding it.
deployed with it.

We currently have no business or financial relationship with any company

mentioned in this whitepaper. The opinions expressed are those of Mediathink LLC
alone, and do not reflect those of any partner or site in which this work may appear.

List of aggregators - Active Refresh, Amphetadesk, Feeddemon, Feedreader, Meerkat, MyNetscape, Newsgator, Newzcrawler, Scopeware Newswatcher, Sharpreader,
Syndic8, Tristana

List of Criteria –
• Capabilities: Searching for new feeds, searching within subscribed feeds, tracking read/unread feeds, usability over multiple operating systems, integrates with
existing software e.g. MS Outlook, alerting capabilities, exporting/importing subscriptions, allowing posting to web logs, feed categorization
• Cost: Evaluation period cost, post evaluation cost
• Convenience: Personalizing the interface, adding personal subscription lists, changing the frequency of searches, ease of fixing bugs
• Maturity: Robustness (stability, presence of bugs, user reviews), # of versions, age of the product
Note: Despite continuous attempts to contact MyNetscape, Meerkat, Syndic8, NewsWatcher and Scopeware, we could not obtain complete and relevant information
directly from these aggregators to generate information regarding the maturity of their offering. Consequently we made estimations to provide average ratings for these
aggregators based on the different factors of the maturity estimate, our internal testing of the offering, and public comments avaiable on line .

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