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Forrester analyst Charlene Li breaks down a new service from SyndicateIQ that can track the number of subscribers to an RSS feed.

She notes that the service can also track if a user at a specific computer or IP address opens an article within 24 hours, thereby tracking actual daily circulation of an article.

As PR professionals begin to issue news via RSS, accurate measurement will certainly be attractive. We all will want to know which journalists or investors opened up our press releases and when. However, we will all need to walk a fine line here.

If you recall a similar service that brought the same functionality for email was harshly criticized by journalists. I haven't tried the service, but hopefully it will enable us to turn some tracking features on and leave others off.

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.