RSS as Corporate Content Glue

Following on from yesterday's post about RSS in the enterprise, Andrew Mitchell, Knowledge Manager at UrbisJHD, pointed out this list of ten ideas for corporate RSS feeds.

Its worth noting that their ideas are not necessarily about blogging - in fact what they are really suggesting is RSS as an alternative to other forms of push notification (e.g. e-mail or even SMS) that may help the audience to deal better with information overload or spam. The key thing to remember with RSS is that it is just another way for serving up information over the Web or an intranet - what you choose to package as RSS is really up to you.

For example, say you had a staff directory stored in a database. If you developed it the right way you might choose to deliver this information via various channels, such as part of the intranet or even via an interactive instant messenger bot. You could also create RSS channels, such as:

• New staff;
• Staff transfers;
• Staff assignments;
• Etc, etc.
  

The beauty of RSS in this instance is that you have a light weight syndication method - individual staff with a particular interest in staff movements might subscribe via their own personal RSS readers, however departmental or project sites could also filter out and display relevant changes on their own home pages.

BTW I wouldn't blame you if you are thinking this all sounds a bit like what a "portal" might do. The answer is yes, because ultimately RSS is just a very simple type of content "glue".