RSS - You Like It. You Really Like It.

Together with my colleague Anna Maria, I recently judged dozens of entries in an online B2B publishing competition. This was hardcore niche stuff, like magazines for people who trade thoroughbred racehorses and other arcane (to us) subject matter.

What struck me was that every one of these Web sites and e-newsletters offered readers the option of subscribing to RSS feeds. All of them — and precious few were aimed at sophisticated Web users. In many cases, the “newsletter” was, in fact, a PDF download (hello, 1997).

Today I was mucking around in our own stats and decided to take a look at subscriptions to ClickZ’s own RSS feeds.

My jaw dropped. Over the past year, each one of our feeds’ subscriber base grew over 400 percent. We’ve offered feeds for well over two years. This past year, syndication hockey-sticked.

RSS, your time has come.