Doc Searls blogged about an email from a friend that said that RSS is opt-in authenticated Email. That got a disagreeing response that prompted him into a deeper analysis:

Obviously, RSS isn't e-mail. But what might it bring to email that isn't there now? In a word, relationship. Mail is, essentially, personal. That it also carries invoices and other necessary institutional correspondence does not make it less so. Institutions (such as public utilities and government agencies) are social millieus too. As a form of mail, e-mail is also, essentially, personal. And when people correspond with any persistence, they don't just converse. They relate.

Now think about the relationships supported by what RSS provides: notification, subscription, syndication. The first two give new meaning to the third, when you think about what can be done to make email as personal as mail was in the first place. I would gladly subcribe to writers whose correspondence is accompanied by an RSS notification. I would gladly syndicate my willingness to relate with people who know me, within the context of an email system that respects the meaning of the verb relate.

And then, in the spirit of Cluetrain, supported by some more interesting concepts such as three tiers of identity, Doc Searls produces some very intriguing pictures. I am going to put them up here, because I think they are an exquisite illustration of what is wrong with marketing and how to approach it.

What we hate about email is that "marketers" in Tier 3 use it to "penetrate," "capture" and otherwise insult us in Tier 1:

What we miss about old fashioned mail is simple relationships between Tier 1 and Tier 2: between ourselves and everybody else:

If we can get that from e-mail, by making it re-mail — relationship mail — and make Tier 3 go away, would it be worth the effort?

Doc Searls ponders:

Can those three verbs (notify, subscribe, syndicate) from RSS give us the relationship-support tools we need to solve both the identity problem and the email problem along with it?

To me all this makes sense. I do not know if this is a solution to the identity problem but the above is sufficiently thought-provoking that I am relaying it to our audience. Let's keep thinking about this.

Here is also a link to the whole presentation by Doc Searls about the concept of identity in communication in the corporate world.

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