Is RSS the new TV?

So I've been thinking, is RSS the new TV? RSS seems to be rapidly emerging as the de facto technology used for distributing and retrieving content in today's web. While thus far much of it has been restricted to blogosphere, I think the implications can reach much further. I think a couple of characteristics makes RSS extremely compelling

1. It's similar to TV in that both are "push model" technologies. However, RSS is different that my desired content is "pushed out" in the background while I do other activities, and I'm free to consume this content on my own time. This is rather different than search or browsing's "pull model" where I have to actively seek and fetch the content I desire. It's not unlike TiVo where I can consume content "on-demand"

At the same time, I have much more discretion over the content source. I only subscribe to sources I want when I want, and I get much more non-establishment, grassroot information. Granted the signal-to-noise ratio is worse, but there's a lot of garbage on TV too.

I would not be surprised if the next generation aggregator built in intelligence (pattern matching, collaborative filtering) that automatically identified new content (feeds) based on what you are currently consuming. Think Amazon recommendations/MySpace + RSS, or maybe even Yahoo 360-like hey your friends are reading/listening/watching this feed, don't you want to watch this too? Now throw an Adsense contextual advertising model on top of that. Yes contextual ads are already being placed in RSS, no big deal. But if it's also combined w/ the context of your other activities, such as your search history, your peripheral devices & their capabilities, what you have on the sidebar, etc., the advertisement could be much more powerful. There is a compelling scenario of how Google and Tivo can combine to use your search context can deliver to super-pinpointed and compelling product ads/offers, which is very interesting. I don't see what you couldn't do the same w/ RSS.

Now text content by itself isn't all that, doesn't nearly compare to the entertainment value of TV. But w/ RSS 2.0 and enclosures, it could be much more interesting

2. Enclosures basically allow you to enclose ("attach") any sort of media w/ RSS, be it photos, video, music, etc. Winer describes how RSS enclosures can easily be used to deliver video content. So now you can get your favorite Pirillo podcasts, Daily Show from comedy central, and your best friends awesome pics from her last Europe trip, any time, any where you want, all via RSS. And you can respond via comments and publish your own content (again, using RSS), which makes the interaction two-way and much better than TV. If I can do all of this at my own control, would I still even want TV in its traditional timed, one-way model? Especially if advertisers get better returns based on the new model due to contextual history from other sources? I would think the studio, advertisers, and customers can all win out on this. Yes, certain content like sports will still be difficult to distribute, but for most other content I hardly even bother w/ TV anymore. Especially news. Maybe it'll be a powerful supplement to TV

3. Now imagine if you can take all of this RSS goodness on the go with a myriad of peripheral devices, hmm, would it get more interesting? Let's find out...

On a related note, since Google's rolling out national WiFi, there's been much speculation of their strategy. If I were Google I would offer free access to consumer in exchange for their activity context while online (search history, browsing, the whole shebang), then combine that w/ Local search and Adsense to deliver some real-time, location specific ads/product offers. That'd be pretty cool. Privacy is an issue, but I think a good number of users will feel most of the time privacy is a small price to pay for free access, myself included. There should of course be an option to opt out while I'm doing personal acitivies like online banking or whatever, but that's a minority of the time to me. Advertising based access has been tried before, w/ Netzero and all, but it's possible Google will be more successful at it thanks to their search expertise.

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So I have to admit, I did go to the fountain and drink some Kool-Aid at the company meeting. Forget the speeches, all the VPs sound the same after a while. But actually seeing the product demos? That was pretty fucking cool. Outlook + RSS + Sharepoint? Sweet. Xbox 360? Makes me drool. Start.com + Sidebar + Sidehow? That's got hella potential (plus it's my team!). IPTV? new Hotmail? Sure there were plenty other things that blew, but not everything was a me-too product. There were some cool stuff. Our management may suck, but down in the trenches some of us peons are still making interesting stuff. That instills some hope. Though the miniscule dividend was disappointing; that means the stock price isn't going anywhere for a while, oh well...

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Wow, has anyone noticed RedHerring's back? I sure didn't know. When they shut down that was like the end of an era. I'm glad to see them back.