I enjoy the archived content I find on the websites for email lists like Thrillist, UrbanDaddy, and Very Short List, but I hate the amount of attention they demand by requiring that I subscribe via email to get updates. Why not offer an RSS feed? RSS was invented to deliver this type of content better. It should be a no brainer to offer a feed for content in this format…

Here’s a few reasonable guesses and rebuttals as to why these services are not offering RSS feeds:

• Issue: RSS doesn’t fit into the site’s “image” because it’s too geeky. Offering RSS would lower themselves.
  • Retort: This is the most likely reason in my mind, but this is a very short-sighted reason. As RSS becomes more user-friendly and abstracted, adoption will climb. A little subtle design work could eliminate this issue.
• Issue: There isn’t enough ROI to implement RSS because mainstream adoption of RSS is too low.
  • Retort: An ROI arguement has to take into account both the return on investment and the effort/time invested. While the return might be low, it’s way to easy to implement RSS to justify an ROI arguement. It’s a few hours of programming and a few hours of design work… wouldn’t even take a week. And, I know these email lists have techies on staff. I don’t buy it.
• Issue: Open rate tracking isn’t good enough in RSS compared to email, and they want to be able to measure users’ behavior.
  • Retort: I call bullshit. FeedBurner stats are excellent (and too cheap) to justify this arguement. In fact, considering all the anti-tracking mechanisms built into email clients these days, FeedBurner tracking is probably more accurate than email tracking.
• Issue: Formatting options in RSS isn’t as rich as in HTML.
  • Retort: This is true, but since so many email clients refuse to download pictures and CSS from the net, rich HTML-formatted emails get mangled in most modern email clients. RSS would avoid this problem.
• Issue: Owning an email list is more valuable than owning a feed with subscribers.
  • Retort: This is only true if the owners violate their privacy policy and resell their lists. From a consumer’s perspective, this is one of the biggest reasons why RSS is better than email lists. So, for any ethical service, this point is not true.

These cultural email digests are niche clones of DailyCandy, the queen of the medium based on traction. I bet if DailyCandy started offering RSS feeds, these clones would all follow suit. So maybe the RSS decision is less about rationale and more about following the leader.

Today I decided to unsubscribe from all email lists that could/should otherwise be offering a feed. I’m done until they start feeding me (or until someone mashes up a feed from them for me).