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NBC Buys RSS to E-mail Service R-Mail; Part One of a Social Strategy?

Roger Cadenhead draws our attention to the sale of rss-to-email service R-Mail, to - oddly enough - NBC. R-Mail.org is a wicked simple site with a “subscribe via email” widget for blogs, a very simple UI, a top feeds list (which shows an international user base), and so on.

According to Rogers…

The service has 50,000 users, 100,000 subscriptions and sends out more than 50,000 e-mails per day, according to DMW Daily, though I suspect a zero’s missing from the last figure.

Founded in 2006 2005, Rogers considers R-Mail to be one of the most missed stories of late, having been passed over for coverage in favour of Zookoda. With 50,000 users, a one-person team (Randy Charles Morin), and now a successful buyout (sum unknown), it does seem like one that’s flown under the radar.

That being said, there’s nothing on how much NBC paid, or what their plans are for the service. Morin’s blog notes the news, but adds nothing more to it. If they picked it up for a song (and hired Morin in the process, then it may have been less expensive than developing an email subscription service in house. The current NBC site includes neither RSS nor email subscriptions, and has the enigmatic byline “social-networking coming soon.”

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