At the recent TorCamp ‘unconference’ I joined a group discussing RSS and how it works in marketing. One of the questions was ‘why is RSS better that email newsletters?’. My immediate reaction was ‘it just is’, but that’s not a terribly well reasoned opinion so I thought I would give that question some further thought.

My own personal use of the two alternatives, RSS and email newsletters, suggests that RSS is the one that works for me. I have 41 feeds subscribed right now but I only receive three or four email newsletters.

Timing/frequency: I read RSS at my leisure v. receiving email newsletters when it suits the senders

Spam: I only read the RSS feeds I want to read and can remove them from my list forever with a single click v. every reputable email newsletter has an ‘unsubscribe’ link, but there’s no guarantee that it will work

I’m sure there are other reasons why RSS works for me, but those are the ones that come to mind right now. I guess in a sense this is the old push v. pull argument. If I, the user, is in charge of the pull then I can stop pull when I want and stop pulling at any point, and I like that control.