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RSS Advertising May Work Around Spam Issues
"Retailers are also aware that many consumers are getting fed up with commercial e-mail. Jon Nordmark, the chief executive of eBags, a firm that uses RSS at its Web site, said in the New York Times that 'I don't know how many e-mails you get a day, but I can't keep up. Rather than delivering a slightly relevant message to a person's mailbox, RSS allows us to get customers very detailed information directly.'

The procedure is pretty straightforward. Using eBags an an example, the company places RSS icons near the site's products with messages offering users regular updates on those products. Once a user has indicated a product preference, the user then clicks on the icon telling the company to send the alerts to his personalized page (such as MyYahoo). eBags will then send an alert only when it has new information or a promotion relevant to the specific product. Mr. Nordmark sums up the advantages of this new arrangement by noting that '[RSS is] a way to basically position highly relevant microsites in front of consumers.'"