Really Simple Ideas For RSS

RSS is here to stay (well, at least Google thinks so as evidenced by the purchase of Feedburner). I’m guessing that Google will do a lot for RSS – the integration of feeds on one’s personal Google homepage has already caused the use of RSS to grow exponentially.

Most importantly, the marketing potential for RSS is tremendous and to date, largely untapped. RSS is the ultimate “PULL” technology for the consumer. Here are some great services that are already available via RSS:

1) Travel: Kayak.com is brilliant. You can design a customizable RSS update based on your travel criteria. For example, I have customizable updates for flight routes that I want to monitor. When tickets from New York to San Juan, PR go below $100, I will be notified (and hopefully soon be on the beach).

2) Career Search: Indeed.com & SimplyHired.com: Each of these career-focused search verticals allow one to customize job feeds. For example, I received updates for all interactive ad sales jobs in New York City. RSS allowed me to monitor the latest opportunities in a highly manageable way. I was able to stay on top of the market extremely well.

3) Customizable Searches: Google Alerts for example allow one to be updated whenever a search term receives new relevant information. In my personal experience, I have found that Google alerts don’t work all that well and it leaves much to be desired.

Some ideas for the future?

Retail: Instead of signing up for annoying email updates from your favorite stores, sign up for RSS updates based only on the information that you want. For example, Banana Republic could offer customers RSS updates for upcoming sales or even updates based on customizsed preferences on a product, price, or seasonal basis. In theory, I could pick and choose exactly what communications that I receive. If a jacket I like goes below $100, I would get pinged. I’d prefer this over an annoying HTML email announcing irrelevant information (such as a women’s sale).

Let us know if you have any other ideas for RSS and how it can help improve information consumption.

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