Interest in RSS growing fast

According to MarketingVox, RSS is taking off in a big way, citing an article about RSS in the NY Times:

"Visitors to nytimes.com via its own feeds, for example, have soared from about 500,000 a month at the end of 2003 to 7.3 million last April, said Toby Usnik, the Company's PR director. And Microsoft has announced that it will integrate RSS into its next operating system."

But it adds a note of caution for those looking to use it for advertisting:

"Sites that offer feeds as an ad in itself, sending headlines meant to drive traffic back to their site, may be missing the boat, as research is now showing that RSS users often look only at the feeds, not the sites from which they are sent..."

This is something to note for the political world. We shouldn't assume readers will come to our site for more information - we need to make sure the information in the feeds delivers our message.

You may not like them but...

Microsoft is launching a new version of its CRM software. They are including many feature previously lacking in their earlier releases and they will have a hosted solution (see previous post).

It may not be the best solution (in fact, it almost certainly won't be) but it will undoubtably work well with MS Office which makes it easier for people to learn, and it will no doubt be priced competitively.