I'm often asked, where's the payoff with RSS? What's the revenue model? For some strange reason, I've never struggled with this question. It's obvious; the payoff [for internal business use] is time. RSS is a time manufacturing system—a concept that few technologies provide. What's the revenue model for for SMTP (the email protocol)? Does anyone ponder the revenue model of a commercial jet? How about a power drill? These are each technologies that manufacture time—RSS is no different. As an accountant (with degree-related emphasis in cost accounting), I can easily see that syndication of knowledge (information in general) may impact the Global 2000 in terms of trillions of dollars in productivity. As businesses realize how much it costs to not be aware of critical business information, or when they spend lots of time finding stuff that could just as easily find their employees, the current hype over RSS will look like the warm-up session preceding a great symphonic performance. There are many ways to calculate the ROI on RSS because [like many XML technologies] RSS can be used for hundreds, perhaps thousands of business processes. "RSS is at the edge of a huge acceleration in adoption - The early users have been bloggers, which have clearly exploded geometrically.... The next adopters are online content publishers. Corporations are starting to use the technology. This is where it will go mainstream. The novelty factor has clearly worn off. We're now shifting into a mode where folks are looking for and extracting value from the platform." -- Brad Feld, Mobius RSS is already making inroads into businesses. We'll know when it's making great strides when we stop referring to it as RSS. ;-) | 
