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July 19, 2005
RSS Goes Corporate
RSS has really taken off over the last couple of years. Yet there's still a relatively small percentage of people actually using RSS on a daily basis and few law firms have embraced RSS as a delivery mechanism for internal or external information. But that's going to change, probably sooner rather than later. All that's needed is an enterprise approach to RSS, putting the capability to read RSS files on every desktop in your organization.
I always thought that RSS would really take off once Microsoft incorporated an RSS reader into Outlook. There's no hint of that on the horizon, but Newsgator has filled the gap. Newsgator's RSS reader integrates with Outlook, putting RSS feeds right where they belong. Newsgator is now positioning their product in the enterprise market, according to a Red Herring article, RSS Goes Corporate.
Certainly the Newsgator strategy seems to make sense, though other players in the industry, namely, PubMed's CTO, Bob Wyman, writes in his blog, "I've regularly argued against PubSub investing too much in aggregator development since it is inevitable that Microsoft would eventually blow away whatever we created." It's hard to dispute that logic.
Pluck investor Allen Morgan also has an interesting point concerning enterprise newsreaders. According to the article, he states "It's a mistake to sell newsreaders straight to the enterprise at this point." He believes that grassroots adoption is the only way drive the corporate buying cycle. "When the CIO is the last person not to have it, the CIO decides to buy a license." There's definitely a certain logic to that point of view as well.
Reports that the upcoming version of Internet Explorer will include an RSS reader are encouraging though I can't help but think that integrating into Outlook, as Newsgator does, makes more sense.
At any rate, it's hard to know exactly when RSS will hit the corporate world big time. But once it does, we'd better be ready!
Comments
The interesting thing to watch about RSS adoption in the enterprise is that adoption of many Internet technologies came about because people took them up at home or school: e.g, the Web, e-mail.
I think home users are a long way from seeing widespread adoption of RSS, but this is an area where enterprises can get people accustomed to receiving their news this way. E-mail is very ingrained in daily habits. It will be interesting.
I've talked to the people at KnowNow (http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200505/ij_05_18_05a.html) and the most interesting thing about what they're doing is talking about making any type of data available in an RSS feed, not just news or content usually reserved for newsletters. They do a lot of work in financial services, and getting information to traders via RSS might have some value because it's instant.
Posted by: Mike Pastore at July 20, 2005 08:19 AM
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