From the marketing end of things, RSS feeds still represent an as-yet unspammed channel to customers, though admittedly it’s a one-way trip.

Deliverability is quite high, especially if the target is using an online feed aggregator (like Google Reader or Bloglines).

Still, with spam filters becoming ever-more-aggressive to deal with a tidal wave of spam, I’m wondering if I won’t be using GoogleTalk to communicate more in the future.

If the recipint is a conspicious overconsumer of RSS feeds, the result will be unwanted and unmanagable.

From the technical perspective, Spam filtration devices are used on almost every enterprise firewall. Both valid and unwanted email can be “bounced” due to the spam engine used; keyword based, hueristics, etc.

RSS is an electronic feed, and is subject to the same filtration.

Human-based mail can be resent if a filter rejects the prior post, RSS will not be resent, as there is no human monitoring the “send” to see it bounce back from the destination.

Mail administrators cannot even scratch the surface of the activity a small enterprise generates. In my case, 4000 permanent employees generate (both send/recieve) one million messages a week.

In short, RSS marketers may need to consider that an aggressive message may vanish at the firewall, with no one to mourn its passing.