This installment of the Online Marketing Champions series features a pioneer in RSS technology, Royal P.
Farros, co-Founder, CEO, and chairman of MessageCast. Farros was
also founder, CEO, and chairman of iPrint Technologies; officer and general
manager of Deluxe Corporation; chairman and EVP of T/Maker Company; 2000 Winner,
San Jose Business Journal Entrepreneur of the Year and was on the MicroTimes 100
List of Industry Leaders. Farros has also appeared numerous times on CNBC,
Silicon Spin, and other financial and high-tech venues. He is a frequent guest
lecturer at both Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School
and holds multiple patents for online desktop publishing/manufacturing process
work.
Via RSS, MessageCast is pioneering ways to dramatically improve
electronic messaging and broadcast communication while eliminating SPAM. In our
interview Farros discusses the explosive growth of RSS and its bright future in
the realm of marketing and communications.
eMarketingIQ: How is the RSS marketing
revolution going and is there a comparison you can make in regard to its impact
long-term?
Royal Farros: It’s become a bigger topic than
just how to communicate with customers. RSS is still in its infancy, but I
predict it will have the same long-term impact that SMTP did. SMTP was the one
protocol that allowed everyone to communicate. It provided the method that
allowed everyone to talk with one another. Now with e-mail and all that it
entails at present, e-mail itself has run amok, and there’s a better way for
consumers and companies to talk to one another via RSS.
I hate giving my e-mail out, so you have legitimate marketing companies
with opt-in, but they can’t get their e-mails to the opt-in subscribers. RSS is
going to clean all that up.
eMarketingIQ: How is RSS an enabling
technology?
RF: It’snot just RSS, but real-time. It’s just
a protocol, but it’s what you do with it. RSS is a triggering mechanism. You
don’t need listening devices or rules engines to maintain it. RSS is real-time
information, something happens, you can inform your subscribers and it takes
seconds to do so
Let’s take an example of a company I followed that I knew was going to
miss their first guidance numbers. I was watching the stock and thinking the
stock should be moving, but it didn’t move at all. Finally, the stock drops 35%
in six minutes. That was way after I got the information that the company was
going to miss its first guidance numbers. RSS changes the game because the
time-consuming deployments won’t exist. This will change the way people do
business.
eMarketingIQ: Will it ever replace e-mail?
RF: No. There’s always going to be a need for
good old-fashioned e-mail, just like there’s still a place for snail mail. But
for marketing via e-mail, yes it’s going to change that. With RSS, it’s
anonymous and the customer fully controls the process. Today , as a customer,
you are not in control. You can be added to mailing lists with indirect opt-in
even with list rentals, etc. RSS is going to have a giant impact on
that.
It’s the same kind of impact that i-Tunes and Napster have had in
changing the way people distribute music in the world.
eMarketingIQ: What do you think is important for marketers to understand
about consumers?
RF: That people like to be anonymous and like
being in control. Look at Pointcast. It came out of nowhere and went to the
moon. Pointcast took down internal networks, etc., but the idea was brilliant.
RSS is Pointcast 2.0.
eMarketingIQ: Can you describe the term Alert Engine Marketing (AEM) in
regard to RSS?
RF: RSS is the universal data trigger in
AEM.
Here's the opportunity: There are a zillion blogs being created,
capturing very specific audiences. Advertisers would indeed covet sharing their
message with such targeted audiences.
The problem: Without RSS, you have to custom develop an alerting
mechanism for each blog. Clearly impossible to scale.
The solution: An alerting mechanism that triggers off RSS
updates.
The brilliance: Info in the RSS file also helps make the ad relevant and
therefore useful.
eMarketingIQ: You were a panelist on the RSS, Real-Time Networks, and The Best Way To
Fix Horribly Broken E-mail And Get Killer Results at the DMA
convention in New Orleans
recently. Do you have any observations about the general perception of
RSS?
Author: Nettie Hartsock
Previous article: 02 May 2007
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