RSS is a specification for creating information exchange; specifically useful for content syndication and awareness of content change. Blogs (and blog readers) benefit greatly from this unique (and pervasive) syndication format.

But many things can (and do) benefit from RSS. Ideas as radical as syndicating the prices charged at a gas pump is one use case that took me by surprise. But we shouldn't be so surprised; look at all the interesting use cases that have been developed with ODBC (a popular database protocol) which is also a technical implementation detail like RSS. In 1991 I don't recall anyone prejudging where ODBC would hit its stride. This points out an interesting aspect of Web 2.0 - we spend a lot of time commenting about how a technical specification should (or will) be used. Seems like the domain of geeks and late-night IM rants. But it points to the idea that the blogosphere has transformed RSS beyond that of a technical specification; it's a technology now, and in some people's minds, it's a friggin' product.

"The biggest opportunities for RSS are not in the blogosphere but as a corporate communication channel." -- Sharon Housely

In a private thread with Sharon she explained this in greater detail and (like her) I like to think of RSS as a great implementation detail for many business problems - outbound corporate communications is but one. B2B is another, and I would tend to believe it is a more lucrative place where information change occurs more frequenelty and such awareness has greater value. But Sharon makes some fine points in this piece.

A good example of solving specific business problems with RSS is Spanning Partners - who recently rolled out a beta for Spanning Salesforce; a secure Salesforce.com integration to provide RSS awareness feeds for new leads.