Some of you may have read the article RSS for the Real World in MarketingProfs or on Brand Advocate recently. As with anything we say in life, sometimes we wish we could change, or add to what we said, that being said, there are a few addendum and errata that I’d like to clear up with the article.

Stephen Cohen, Michael Fagan and John Botscharow have dutifully pointed out some of these things already.

- You can include images in RSS feeds (and most likely within Atom as well). However, the “stock” summary that comes out of Blogger or MT usually includes just text.

- You don’t “need” to download a news aggregator; you can use web-based aggregators like Bloglines and Feed-Me. That being said, if RSS is to truly be part of the desktop, like email, it will be most likely embedded into one of the tools that we already use to communicate, like our email client. Also, many corporations block websites that they deem to be inappropriate or a productivity drain. Couple that with the fact that many corporate desktops are “locked down” and people can’t install their own software (at least in our company), RSS/Atom will need to be more “integrated” into the pre-existing or pre-approved corporate standards.

- RSS can work for neophytes, but it’s admittedly more complicated than setting up your average web-based email client. These issues of usability and friendliness will shake out soon.

- You “can” track RSS, the same way we used to track banners and email, with a small embedded GIF/JPG which gets tracked in your web analytics software.

This is what I really love about the web and weblogs. We learn, we change, we post it!