FAQ: As a publisher, will I have access to the email addresses of my subscribers (like FeedBlitz does)?
Q: As a publisher, will I have access to the email addresses of my subscribers (like FeedBlitz does)?
In short, "no".
RssFwd's core belief is that feeds let subscribers choose to subscribe or unsubscribe -- risk free. This is also the fundamental difference between feeds (rss/atom) and traditional (did i say that?) "e-newsletters".
This risk is the risk of email address misuse, aka spam, and it's perceived to (its irrelevant whether truth or myth) come from the publishers & affiliates, and is also an unnecessary barrier for people when they just want to listen in and subscribe to content.
I guess the question RssFwd asks is, 'What does a publisher really want to do with the email addresses, other than to disseminate more content? If it's really so, isn't that already being done via the existing feed to the existing subscribers?' [Btw, the number of subscribers is revealed]
I do see the audacity of the above stand being interpreted as "you can't trust them with your email address,.. come trust RssFwd!" :-P But I guess only time will tell.
An arguably weak solution is that RssFwd actually promotes anyone to download and run their own RssFwd service, so privacy paranoids can choose to either run their own, or use a RssFwd service run by someone they trust.
Aside: Its heart warming to know RssFwd was a candidate as the new "Hello World" application when learning a new programming framework: Fatbobman tries to familiarize himself with Django this way.