Hello,

I do think that in case of content/informational sites using RSS even instead of newsletters or eAlerts is a very good choice.

Good things:
- user is sure that is going to be no spam
- is much easier to build a RSS (with each entry pointing to a site page) than a newsletter; not much web dev overhead, no more mailinglists (or even webserver shut down by a crazy hosting provider because someone reported newsletters as been spam)
- would be nice to have site feeds added to mashups as netvibes or igoogle
- we still ca deliver ads over the site pages where RSS feed is pointing to

User retention is assured partially may say some people, but due to fact user is more willing to accept this than a newsletter i think user retention is in fact better...