GREAT article. I will be passing this along to our staff. A friendly question, though: Why not add a bit about email program-based aggregators, that use email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird as platforms?

I could be wrong, but my impression is that I use RSS feeds more than any of my office colleagues. Working at a nonprofit whose staff largely admires RSS feeds from afar-- they've heard of them, know that they're the wave of the future, even want to implement them in communication strategies but aren't quite sure how they work or how to use them--I think one of RSS's biggest adoption obstacles is that people have to use completely separate "reader" software. It's tough to ask folks to check yet *another* web page regularly.

(As an aside, I find this adoption hurdle a bit amusing... after all, wasn't the inconvenience of having to manually check a website for updates the principle reason for RSS technology? And yet we're asking folks to adopt to RSS by using a website or opening a completely new desktop program, specifically for that purpose, every day ;) Ah, life.)

I'm probably biased, and I'm drawing as strongly on my personal experience as my observations of my office colleagues. I use Google Reader for my personal feeds, and intraVnews Outlook-based reader for my work feeds (Attensa is another good Outlook product). I check my Google Reader news maybe once every two weeks (when I remember, and I happen to be close to my computer). My IntraVnews feeds, which land in my Outlook, are read almost every day. If my work-related feeds were not integrated into my Outlook, I would probably have to add an item to my calendar or to-do list to remember to check them online or through the stand-alone software, if I were to check them on any kind of regular basis. Certainly defeats the time-sensitive content harvesting advantage that RSS has.

What do others think? I've always been surprised that email client-based aggregators are conspicuously absent from "RSS 101" tutorials. Are email aggregators something that would speed adoption among the RSS-curious, or more of an "advanced functionality" for experienced users? Thoughts?