Jon Udell about the push-pull debate:

Forget the old rules for how Internet content arrives. It's all about end-user control.

Absolutely, the end-user rules. Any product or service that attempts to restrict what the end-user can do and should do, gets what it deserves. Migration of customers to a less limiting competitor. This is where the 'new economy' is revolutionary, it turns the old business models based on control of channels to market and therefore of customer into crusty old entities chasing their own tails. Traditional marketing will be the first to go. Udell has more to say on this:

Recently I spoke with Dave Lewis, vice president of deliverability management and ISP relations at Digital Impact. His company's motto: "Making e-mail marketing more effective is our single-minded passion." In one of his online essays, entitled How to Keep B-to-B E-mail From Getting Caught in Filters, his first rule is "Get permission."

I argued that RSS does away with the need for marketers to ask our permission, for us to grant it, for marketers to play by the rules when we revoke it, and for us to trust that marketers will play by the rules. With e-mail marketing, control resides with the sender and permission is a "best practice." With RSS, control resides with the recipient and permission is an inherent property of the medium.

I feel Dave's pain. E-mail direct marketers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They believe e-mail is necessary because it's an "intrusive" medium, yet they are forced to neuter e-mail's intrusiveness by complying with the opt-in gold standard. Unfortunately, there's no middle ground. With RSS recipients can have, and increasingly will demand, control of the channel.

Dave and I agreed on one point. "You'd be crazy not to communicate with your customers in their medium of choice," he said. My preference is RSS. Trust me with control of the channel, and I'll be more likely to trust you with my business.

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