SocialMail, another Big In Japan tool, recently launched to help you manager and organize group email by turning it into an RSS feed. Since an RSS feed can be seen by anyone that has address it is an excellent way handle large mailing lists without having to give out an email address. Alexander Muse explains some of the benefits as follows:
- Non managed mailing lists (i.e. you don’t need to mess with adding and deleting users)
- Catch-all email addresses ([email protected], [email protected] and so on)
- Turn existing mailing lists into a feed
- Re-purposed content (take any email content and deliver it via feed to a website)
I think this is a great usage of syndication since ultimately I see feeds replacing newsletters and other mass email functions in the future.