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Contact"By Request" - Why Did You Add an Email Subscription to Your Blog's Feed If You Are Such an Advocate of RSS?
That's a very fair question. My decision to provide an email subscription option grew out of conversations I was having with Matt Homann, Tom Mighell and the Rethink IP guys on this subject. In fact, we all might have been on a Skype chat where we talked about the topic.
Although I think almost exclusively of the subscribers to my RSS feed as my audience when I write my posts, I also realized that a large number of people visit my blog to read it and still use email, not a newsreader, as their primary information information retrieval tool. I was also getting the occasional question about how to subscribe to my blog by email.
In the Skype conversations I mentioned, people were talking about FeedBlitz as an easy way to provide an email subscription to your RSS feed. When I looked into it, I saw that I could offer a choice of email subscriptions that could include one, two or all of the blogs where I write: DennisKennedy.Blog, Between Lawyers and LexThink. That made it an easy decision to try the experiment of adding the email subscription option that visitors to this blog will see in the left-hand column of the main page.
I still think that using a newsreader to subscribe to my RSS feed is the best way to consume this blog, but I wanted to make the email option since so many people still live in the email world.
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
Like what you are reading? Check out the other blogs where I post - Between Lawyers (feed) and the LexThink Blog (feed).
Comments
Great post Dennis. I remember that Skype chat well...
We struggled with the RSS/e-mail issue on Rethink(IP) a bit. Initially, we thought that everyone SHOULD be using RSS and, by golly, we'd work to make that a reality. But then it dawned on us...some people (a majority, by a longshot) WANT information delivered by e-mail. So we decided to give the people what they want...choice. Readers can receive our RSS MOJO feeds via RSS or via FeedBlitz-powered e-mail.
I've wondered why people want e-mail over RSS. Some, I bet, are intimidated by new technology, no matter how simple and/or practical it is. Many people are heavily invested in e-mail with their elaborate folder structures, rules, etc. that allow efficient review and storage of information. For others, e-mail is just the easiest way to recieve stuff.
It's become so commonplace to "Enter your e-mail address here" that, I think, it will take some time for RSS to supplant e-mail as the preferred form of information delivery, despite its advantages.
In the meantime, I'll keep preaching the gospel.
Posted by: Matt Buchanan | September 27, 2005 09:31 PM