Kas writes about the power of RSS as a way of individuals creating a personalized information source.

“What this exercise really shows, however, is the power of standards like RSS. This is a point worth emphasizing. As Web content becomes more granular, compositional, and personalizable (not to mention more perishable), subscribability becomes a design consideration. Users want to be able to opt into dynamic content. This is a theme I’ve seen emerge over the past year in the Web CMS world as well as in Enterprise Search, where it’s no longer enough just to let users save queries; they now need to be able to subscribe to their queries (or the content generated by them).

Bottom line? Feed-based delivery of content isn’t just about aggregation; it’s about empowering users — giving them the power to choose how they want to consume content. That’s a subtle distinction that’s driving a good deal of change in the content management industry right now, and it’s something we continue to watch carefully.”

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