I’ve always dreamed of RSS replacing email as a spam-free person-to-person communication device.

Adam Curry says it’s not possible, though I don’t see why anyone would believe him. I’ve never heard  or read Dave Winer talk about if this was possible.

For me, I originally thought a system of RSS+SSE might be possible for this, except for the fact that it would seem no better than email because of SPAM issues, so why bother?

I met Jim Moore at OPMLCamp a few months back and recently sent him a note. He’s using a service called Spam Snag to pro-actively stop SPAM.

I got a reply and had to click-through before my email and any subsequent emails got through.

It occurred to me that by building that into the protocol, we could create a better, stronger, faster messaging service right on top of RSS.

I’ll think on this some more. I did have some wine with dinner, so I may be missing an obvious  reason why this won’t be feasible.

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Jonathan, over at Web 2.0 newspapers , adds a bit to the argument traveling around lately about newspapers and communities. I highly doubt there is person reading his blog or this one who doesn’t think he’s right.
It’s funny, because even the most clueless newspaper people I know wouldn’t deny that online community is important, even if they weren’t sure what it meant.

As I mention in a comment on Jonathan’s post, the difference between now and five years ago, when I was yelling “community!” at my newspaper, is this.

Then, we should have been trying to create a community. Now, we need to think about joining them.

Then, slashdot. Now, blogosphere. Next, Jabber.

Whuh? That’s right, folks. Like Stowe Boyd (who graciously auctioned www.podosphere.com off to me -yeehah) says, :”The Buddylist is the Center of the Universe” .

And Gtalk supports Jabber, and all players will eventually melt down to interop, and any social network can be built on top of the presence of IM.

This is not a publishing medium, it’s communication. Whether you publish and subscribe, store and forward, use voice, text or avatar, you need one identity, one voice. IM will be open in Second Life as well as on the desktop.
When IM adds a store and forward component, email is dead and the game is over. Pure conversation.

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