In Rok's Email (Newsletter) Publishing Predictions For 2006, point (1) mentions using RSS feeds to build email ezines on the fly. I'm not a big fan of full-text feeds, but this idea is still useful for partial-text feeds.

In fact, this might be the perfect way to introduce people to RSS/Atom: get them to subscribe to an ezine that's delivered by email. The email would be a full-HTML-formatted version of the partial-text feed. At the bottom (or even the top) of the email would be a marketing message such as: "These headlines are also available for your headline reader. Find out more." Feel free to use a more effective message; I'm not a marketer, per se.

I'm suggesting the term "headline reader" or "headline aggregator" instead of "(web) feed reader" because someone new to RSS/Atom will not necessarily understand "feed reader". The message would link to an overview of web feeds and their benefits to the ezine subscriber.

Of those ezine subscribers who are curious, some of the will become converts to web feeds, if the overview page is not too complicated and/or confusing. Some may become converts at a later date. At worst, the curious will at least learn about web feeds - and that's half the battle for RSS/Atom evangelists.

Note: I'll post a simple PHP script - at a future date - that parses an RSS feed and produces an email. If I have time, I'll do the same for the Atom feed format.

(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/

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