A few years back, about the time I first got into blogging, circa 2003, I had a chat with a good friend at Business Wire where I forecasted the demise of them due to the use of RSS feeds in the blogosphere.
The recent SEC decision, in my mind, shows that my I wasn't far off, and over time, the use of services like BusinessWire, PR Newswire and MarketWatch will become less and less relevant as RSS and Personalization of feeds, as well as the alerting of those feeds takes over. I felt than, and still do now, that a whole new way of information dissemination was upon us, and that the new way would supplant the old way.
Here's why.
1. A feed reader replaces the need to scan the wires.
2. An RSS feed can be subscribed to and the notification to the people who need to know can be over a variety of means (email, RSS Reader, SMS, IM, microblogs like Twitter, Jaiku, etc.) that the recipient decides is there vehicle of receiving the news.
3. The RSS feeds are searchable
4. Commentary directly to the originator is simplified. No need for email. Simply comment or ask a question on the feed and the company spokesperson will be notified.
5. The question likely would have been asked by multiple outlets. Now the answer can be consistent and specific questions dealt with on a one on one basis online or offline
6. There's no need for an intermediary. Now a direct relationship can be established and more information can be available from one place.
With an RSS based information center, the media, analysts, bloggers and investors can stay on top of what's happening, with all the information in one place. For public companies, the SEC decision now allows them to reduce their budgets for "wire services" and build better RSS based web sites, portals and information centers. It also means that content management takes on a new meaning, and for companies in that space gives them a big new leg to stand on.
Overall this is great news for bloggers too, as it now adds one more layer of respect, which means greater levels of protection in reporting, supports confidentiality of sources, and allows us all greater access to information as it happens to be reported, without the need to have to look in many places. It also reduces the need for Google Alerts as our feed readers and other notification engines pick up that piece of the puzzle.
So while BusinessWire, PR Newswire and MarketWatch, all offer RSS, with this decision by the SEC that means they now have alot more competition and have to seriously look at their costs, and start thinking about lowering them to match what is now virtually, a free market.
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