RSS coming to the masses via Microsoft’s Outlook

RSS coming to the masses via Microsoft’s Outlook is the subject of a post yesterday from Bill Gratsch at Blawg.org.

Changes are afoot in Internet Explorer (IE), version 7. I have been testing out the beta version of the new IE for a little while now. As you may have heard, IE 7 comes ‘out of the box’ with an RSS feed reader built in. This reader serves as sort of first glimpse of what is coming down the pike from Microsoft……With Microsoft’s dominant market share, once the business world starts upgrading its desktop, we will see a lot of people who are not using RSS today, suddenly given the option for free and as a standard feature. With easily accessible tools offered up in their standard web browser and email client, many people are going to give feed reading a try. The end result, in my own opinion, is that it is just a matter of time before the ‘subscribe’ model for information dissemination takes it place alongside ‘browse’ and ‘search.’ And, the ‘time’ issue will likely be tied closely to the speed at which Microsoft gets its customers to upgrade their desktops.

Lawyers and professional business people are soon going to find their target audience using RSS in droves. It will be like websites all over. Those law firms and businesses who do not have an effective blog strategy to syndicate their content via RSS will be playing catch up. Fast.

Only this time it will be better for the public. Instead of websites, acting as a little more than brochures, we’ll have practical information and insight being broadcast to one’s target audience.