Just read this article by diygod titled Saying No to Newsletters. I don't completely agree with some of the points made, but as someone without a wallet, I can't leave comments. So, I'll take this opportunity to write a blog post instead.
These issues make me feel like newsletters are like tyrants who are desperate to prove themselves, but lack the ability to achieve the desired results for publishers, while excessively infringing on user choice and efficiency.
No technology wants to prove itself; those who want to prove themselves are always behind the technology.
In comparison, RSS is more concise and efficient. Subscriptions can be managed centrally, and the processes of categorizing, bookmarking, subscribing, and unsubscribing are very simple. On the other hand, newsletters mix various emails together, making them very scattered and difficult to manage. It's hard to know exactly what content you've subscribed to and when it will suddenly appear. Moreover, the content formats are also varied, making it very messy to view and read. So, you can't even bookmark an article, let alone convenient third-party integration.
Newsletters are difficult to effectively categorize and filter, and they are mixed with all normal emails, requiring manual organization. This can easily lead to information overload and spam email problems.
RSS, on the other hand, allows for easy categorization and filtering. For unimportant content, you can mark all as read with just one click, instantly relieving the pressure.
Most of the email clients or web-based email management pages I've used have automatic categorization and one-click read functionality.
Although RSS updates are not real-time, they are generally in hours, and self-built services like RSSHub can even update every minute. In contrast, newsletters have update cycles in days or even weeks or months, which is clearly much slower.
There is an obvious concept confusion in the above paragraph. "RSS updates" refers to the time it takes for RSS to actively pull new content, while "newsletter updates" refers to the time it takes for the newsletter sender to update. These two are not the same. Even if RSS pulls updates every five minutes, it is useless if the RSS provider does not update. On the other hand, newsletters generally push new article updates to readers immediately, isn't this more timely?
The openness of RSS is reflected in the fact that it does not require users to provide personal information, thus ensuring better privacy and security. However, newsletters require at least an email address, which increases the risk of data leakage or abuse. Moreover, emails may contain malicious links or attachments.
Emails may also contain malicious links or attachments, so does that mean the data returned by RSS is risk-free?
Conclusion#
Overall, RSS and newsletters are actually different technical solutions on the same content distribution track. RSS tends to be more like a bulletin board for the public, while newsletters tend to provide timely content delivery services to specific groups. Both solutions have their pros and cons. RSS represents pull, while newsletters represent push. It's really strange to make a general discussion.
Here are some unsupported opinions I'm presenting here:
- Newsletters have a higher open rate than RSS.
- Newsletters generally have higher average quality.
- Newsletters have an advantage over RSS in the paid domain.