It’s finally official. The next Internet Explorer and operating system from Microsoft will have RSS functionality integrated, thus finally opening the way for mass RSS penetration. It’s time for marketers to wake up an embrace RSS as a standard communicational channel.

I am consistently surprised at how few adult webmasters are utilizing XML-based syndication technologies like RSS, especially in this genre, where your customers tend to be on the tech-savvy side. RSS is an extremely easy way to keep all of your audiences (customers, PR outlets, etc) aware of content updates and important news, and getting a feed going on your site is really easy (if your tech folks know what they’re doing, at least). Very little of the content featured on this site is not distributed via RSS.

Up until this point, you could sorta make the argument that utilizing RSS wasn’t essential, because about 90% of the general computer-using market didn’t know jack squat about it. This announcement, however, ensures that RSS and related technologies will achieve mass-market penetration in short order. Webmasters who do not start leveraging RSS will be at a severe disadvantage in terms of marketing and audience interaction.