WebProNews

Hamid Shojaee just wrote me about a startup he's formed called Squeet. The service streams RSS feeds via email.

Shojaee talks about it here on his blog. He also says that the service can update feeds as fast as every 30 minutes or in once daily digest emails. The latter is the approach competitors, such as FeedBlitz, pursue.

RSS feeds aren't going to replace email publishing any time soon. However, I do see a future for paid email newsletters that are powered by feed technology. Using RSS you could offer a paid newsletter service that is monetized with contextual ads (e.g. from AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network) and/or Amazon Associate links. I could easily see how someone might form a potentially profitable paid email newsletter company by combining three different services - FeedXS for publishing, FeedBurner for serving ads and FeedBlitz or Squeet for RSS to email conversion. You don't even need a blog. However, you do need proprietary content that's worth paying for if you want to monetize your newsletter.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.