Over at MediaReseacher, Tony Obregon Tony Obregon wonders how RSS will affect the future of the newswires.

"No-frills" wire services like PR Web that accept and deliver feeds via RSS will put pressure on BusinessWire, PRNewswire and MarketWire to lower their prices. Nevertheless, marketers looking for the widest possible distribution will continue to use the marquis services, because attracting masses of people to subscribe to JoeBobInc's feed isn't realistic. However, because RSS is so easy to repackage, the door has been thrown open for wire service competitors, especially for niche markets.

From a user perspective, the RSS feeds offered today by these services are rudimentary (I use Google Reader to aggregate them into one location) and should add search features and standardize on the meta tags that enhances the basic categorizations that they offer. For example, I don't care about new hire releases, but product announcements should automatically be at the top of my list.

Moving from proprietary to open standards always lowers prices (good!), fosters more competition (better!), but forces the existing market leaders to adapt (mebbe not so go for them).

Each time you play a different song, the MiniStore features information about the artist currently playing, as well as “Listeners Also Bought…� Here’s a full size capture of Apple marketing in action: as you can see, I’m playing Mary J. Blige covering U2’s “One�, and the MiniStore shows other albums from Mary J. Blige and U2.

This means, of course, that every single time I play a song the information is sent back to Apple. You can turn off the MiniStore at the click of a button, but it’s not clear whether turning off the MiniStore is the same as turning off the flow of data (one doubts it). And don’t bother looking for a way to turn this “feature� off in the Preference pane: it’s not there.

Either the privacy statement means something, or it doesn’t. My sense is that it doesn’t: the general exceptions Apple carves out for itself in the Privacy Policy are large enough to drive a truck through, making the specific exceptions in the iTunes TOS meaningless.

It looks clear that 2006 is shaping up as the year of the video gold rush. While movie download services have been available for several years, the popularity of vlogs, moves by TV networks to sell online content and Google's Video Store will greatly expand the online video watching audience.

However, unless Google can convince all of the TV networks (most unlikely) to use its publishing system, they will only be one of many players. There is too much room for competition and already established video distribution outlets for Google to dominate. What (primarily younger) webizen is going to pay for Brady Bunch and Have Gun Will Travel episodes?

While Google will enable small-time videographers to gain exposure to many eyeballs, people won't want to sift through the inevitable majority of bad video to find something worth watching. The first feature Google should add is a user rating system so that people can weigh in and separate the wheat from the chaff (ala Digg).

Also, storing and processing all of this video and handling credit card payments for as low as nickel will almost certainly be a drain on Google's financial resources, not a benefit. A micropayment system should be second on their list.

Google will have to continually retool its DRM scheme as ne'er-do-wells will always find a hack. For consumers Google's Video Store will increase selection, but five years from now, you'll still be visiting a variety of sites to get your video fix.