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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Jarvis notes the changing role of journalists:

A change of the role of journalists — and their relationship with the public — from owner sof the story to moderators, editors, enablers, and educators.

Networked news is good, but “SharedNews” is better. Well, that’s just a term I coined some time back to talk about two-way RSS or what might be called RSS Groups.

This is where everyone has access to a feed, much like an email or usenet group. It’s a more sophisticated way to structure a group blog, and it can be completely distributed. Check out SkinnyFarm for an example.

I’ll remind Jeff about a post he wrote about SSE , and I commented on it.

If RSS is two-way, like it can be, then networked news collaboration can be taken to a much higher level.

I’m digressing somewhat, because the real issue here is that news organizations must realize they need to approach the conversation from a peer level.

It’s no longer a lecture, where audience members must raise their hand to contribute. It’s one big dinner party, and no-one likes the guy who tries to dominate the conversation.

That’s why Dave Winer is right about exclusivity. There is an implicit understanding that we are all equal on the web, and any attempts to create a class system will fail. Exclusive 2.0 conferences are making the same mistake that the Old Regimes made.

It’s also why the user-generated content strategies of news organizations are driving me nuts.

By it’s nature, it’s treating the site-user as a lesser voice.

It’s as if newspapers think users will feel priveliged to get their stuff on the organization’s website.

While that may be somewhat true for the New York Times, I don’t think the local newspaper in many towns holds that kind of reverence, especially with the younger follks.

Their friends are more impressed with their MySpace page, than with your poorly designed, million dollar content management system.

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