I’m not a fan of receiving syndicated news and blog updates via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) because it seems like a hard-to-handle faucet that only comes on at full force. Once you sign up, you get flooded with information and it takes a lot of your time to pare it back to what’s valuable. Also, many of my favorite bloggers are terrible at writing headlines and introductions, which really degrades the quality of a ‘feed.’

Anyway, there have been plenty of people saying that RSS will ‘revolutionize’ the way we access information. Louise Story actually has a more cool-headed article in the NY Times that gives everything a more clear perspective.

Marketers See Opportunity as a Web Tool Gains Users – New York Times.

Most R.S.S. feeds – from places like Amazon.com, PBS, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Craigslist – do not now include advertisements. The feeds themselves, which often include summaries of stories or product offerings, serve as advertisements for the sites’ content, and those sites often have ads.

But research is showing that R.S.S. users are often just looking at the feeds, and not the sites where they originate. Google is encouraging content providers to send everything they have, not just headlines, and to include ads only at the end of the feed. "We need to preserve all of the things that are good about R.S.S. feeds right now and also introduce the opportunity for publishers to monetize those feeds," said Shuman Ghosemajumder, a business product manager at Google.

At first, it seems like RSS might rival direct mail as a direct connection between users and suppliers…

As companies learn about advertising opportunities in publishers’ R.S.S. streams, they have begun to express interest in building their own R.S.S. feeds, said Steve Stratz, a spokesman for aQuantive, which owns Avenue A Razorfish, an interactive ad agency in Seattle.

Consumers who want to know about certain products can opt for R.S.S. updates on the products’ Web sites. Advertisers are eager to reach these consumers, so if R.S.S. feeds from companies become widespread, it could reduce the companies’ need to advertise in traditional media, ad agencies said.

But, on the other hand, RSS allows users to stay anonymous…

With R.S.S., Web publishers have no way to know the identities, e-mail addresses, or computer locations of users, making R.S.S. feeds practically spam proof