Ask HN: Why do people use email newsletters instead of RSS?

6 points·csense··10 comments

A number of websites I've seen on HN over the past few years ask users to sign up for an email newsletter for updates.

What advantages does an email newsletter have that aren't shared by a simple blog or RSS feed?

Almost no one uses RSS and it's bad for business. Regarding usage, we have 60k+ newsletter subscribers and maybe a few hundred RSS readers. Regarding business, I can't converse with you directly over RSS, so it has almost no business value as an interactive medium and customer outreach tool.

More people use e-mail, once people have signed up there's a pretty good chance that they'll see messages going forward (for RSS or a blog, they might stop checking), you get some kind of id for each user (and sometimes the domain name can indicate what company they work for.)

Ask 100 people on the street "What is an RSS feed?" That should give you your answer.

Believe it or not but RSS is still an obscure technology for most people.

Email is a default feature.

No it's not. Setting up an SMTP server is really complicated [1]. But most blogging frameworks come with built-in support for Atom/RSS.

[1] http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/index.html

Sorry, I was referring to the end user.

This is an indication that you are too focused on the convenience of the publisher. The convenience of the reader is more important to most of us wanting to get a message out.

Even now many (most?) ISPs seem to offer email service with an internet package, so to the end user it is often built in.

Do you want the harsh true?

... .... Step out of your bubble and you will see no one uses RSS

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