No application should get a preference. Emails should allow for industry best practice.

I would love to see facebook allow output in a rss feed format. the encrypted idea is interesting as well.

but you have to remember that the fastest growing segment of users on facebook are older people. I know i am making a blanket statement here; but many people still do not know how to use a feed reader…. true!
thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights.

happy coding!

With feeds, I have the added confidence that I can unsubscribe by simply removing the feed. It is done from my end, not the other end. Also, messages are automatically grouped by where they came from. I never have to wonder if my unsubscribe request was honored, or if my email address was shared with a third party.

Email should be mainly for people to reach me whom I have specifically given my email address because I was interested in hearing from them. I shouldn’t have to give it out for every kind of thing online that I might simply want to check out. The other things email is commonly used for can be better achieved with some combination of newer technologies such as OpenID, syndication feeds, etc.

As an application developer, I would emphasize communication by feeds, and include email only as an opt-in for users that actually want it. For content meant to remain private, neither email nor feeds are very good solutions - it is best kept on the website itself.

To follow this tangent through, I think it would be interesting to have an encrypted version of feeds - your reader has the key and everyone else who might check the feed sees ciphertext. That would be cool