Wall Street Journal: RSS via blogs is now really big thing

In his Portals Column in the Wall Street Journal, Lee Gnomes reports (subscription req’ed) blogging with its RSS (real simple syndication) is very hot right now, and it’s spreading quickly. Gnomes explains RSS is a technology that bloggers use to, in a manner of speaking, broadcast their writing throughout the Internet.

Many newspapers, Gnomes explains, including the Wall Street Journal, use RSS as an additional method of making their content available online. Yahoo gave RSS a big push in that if something is available in RSS, you’ll be able to put it on your My Yahoo page. Gnomes also reports Microsoft says it will soon be adding similar abilities to its MSN site.

Here’s some additional points Gnomes makes about RSS & blogs, their history and future:

• A year ago, blogs — outside of the small circle of people who actually wrote and read them — were regarded as the daily diaries of people with no real lives to chronicle in the first place. No more.
• Note the irony of it being Yahoo, rather than the original XML (predecessor to RSS technology) evangelist, Microsoft, that is out in front with RSS readers.
• Watch what RSS will do to traditional Web economics. Because of the increasing use of RSS technology, desk top news aggregators and Web based newsreaders like Bloglines will let you read all of the entries from some very popular blogs without leaving your news aggregator or the Bloglines site — in other words, without visiting each blog’s Web pages individually. That’s incredibly convenient for new users but economically injurious for Blog and Web sites with RSS, since many of them support themselves with advertising. Will that lead to adds included in RSS feeds?

Bottom line for law firms and law marketing professionals, RSS is taking off. You need not take my word for it but within a year RSS will be as well known as email and Web sites. As Bill Gates said a few months ago, this is going to make Web sites and email outmoded means of business communication.

It’s your choice. You can poor more money into outdated and inconvenient means (for your target audience) of business marketing communication tools such as Web sites and email newsletters or you can join the rising use of RSS via blogs. It’s not a matter of whether you will use RSS for marketing, it’s a matter of when.