IDC and RSS

Jim McGee recently noted a number of instances of user level activity in the RSS world, among them some things that I have posted recently about analyst firms getting in on the action.   He notes a "shift in focus to thinking about actually increasing the value to customers."  Frankly, while I appreciate the value of the technical discussions surrounding RSS, I'm much more excited about the discussion of the applications of RSS for end users.  Jim's post is an thoughtful summary of that discussion.

On the end user note, there's one more feed to add to the analysts and RSS thread.  Abner Germanow and Chris Greene over at IDC (one of InfoWorld's sister companies at IDG) e-mailed me a few days ago to let me know that there are RSS believers in their organization.   Abner (Research Manager, Wireless LAN & Enterprise Networking at IDC)  wrote:

One problem our customers face is that we produce so much information it can be difficult for our larger clients to keep up. RSS feeds will help our clients manage that information flow.

To that end, IDC's press releases are now available in their first RSS feed (Chris tells me that this is Phase 1, with more to come).  Your first thought might be "who wants press releases in RSS?" but IDC's press releases appear to function more as an abstract of the research they offer, which means you can get some useful data points from them.  Of course, you can buy the full reports from them as well.  Leveraging RSS as a marketing and lead generation tool that intelligently serves the needs of people who consume vast quantities of information seems pretty smart to me.