RSS v. email

I've suggested in the past (see here and here) that perhaps the problem with spam is not spam but email itself, and that spam was merely showing us a shortcoming in that particular method of digital communication. Understanding the true nature of the spam problem is very important because if the above is right, the appropriate response is not to criminalize speech but rather to get on with the business of innovating new forms of digital communication.

As I noted here many people use IM in preference to email and RSS (or Echo/Atom/Pie or whatever we end up with eventually) may point the way to another type of solution.

For more on this, see Dan Gillmor's latest column titled Latest wave of newsreader software beats e-mail. Excerpt:

One of the most promising arenas for RSS is in lightening the load of e-mail, which spammers -- and overly restrictive spam-filtering software -- have all but wrecked.

Just ask Chris Pirillo, who built a business on e-mail newsletters (www.lockergnome.com). He's renounced e-mail as his preferred medium and says RSS is the way to go.

"RSS is evolving as a replacement for e-mail publishing and marketing," he says. "RSS suddenly makes the Internet work the way it should. Instead of you searching for everything, the Internet comes to you on your terms."

I wish public-relations people would get with the program, too. If they'd only start creating RSS feeds of releases, journalists and the public at large could see the material they want, and the PR industry would be able to stop blasting so much e-mail to people whose inboxes are already too cluttered.