RSS == NNTP

Rod Chavez details his ApacheCon 2003 experience, including a talk by Chris Pirillo about how RSS over HTTP should replace SMTP for e-mail marketing and message distribution.



And not just for one-way distribution, either. RSS feeds with track/trace/ping/whatever-backs allow for discussion and user comment.



How is this significantly different than Usenet 15 years ago? RSS feed = newsgroup. Moderated newsgroups allow restricted posting. NNTP allows for an efficient way to distribute the same content to lots of people.



Granted, newsgroup creation requires some oversight, while anybody can create a blog, so maybe blogs are like a relaxed version of alt.*.



Still, I am confused why there is so much effort being expended to invent and reinvent new versions of RSS and RSS readers with all sorts of whizzy features instead of reusing the tons of news serving, exchanging, and reading code that’s out there.

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