As I wrote today on Lockergnome, RSS is really all about choices.

People have the easy choice of subscribing to an RSS feed and just as easy a choice of unsubscribing from an RSS feed.

But even more than that, end-users can choose from dozens and dozens of different RSS aggregators, and it's becoming very much like this in the RSS publishing solutions market. It would seem that "almost every" company is starting to see opportunities in the RSS space, and it remains to be seen how many are actually going to achieve more than marginal market penetration.

This week, the free RapidFeeds (Beta version) hosted web-based RSS publishing solution joins the market.

"RapidFeeds is an online web based service, which provides complete RSS Feed management solutions to publishers and webmasters. As the RSS technology is aggressively spreading across the Internet like wildfire, many publishers are realizing the potential it offers. However, there are still a large amount of publishers who are either unaware of RSS or find it too complicated to use. We, at RapidFeeds are trying to target these web publishers and equip them with all the tools and knowledge they require to adapt and use this ever-growing technology. Without the hassles of creating, managing and tracking their RSS Feeds manually."

I gave it a quick spin and have to admit that setting up a feed is a breeze and takes less than 3 minutes, as does adding new content items. They even offer some basic RSS metrics (RSS feed hits, which does not equal RSS feed subscribers or circulation, and clickthroughs).

Not bad for a free solution. And, as I gather from their FAQ page, they might introduce new features soon, but for a price.

On the RSS aggregator front, Pluck just officially released its RSS aggregator, which actually comes in two flavors: the Web Edition, an online RSS aggregator service, and the Internet Explorer version, which nicely plugs in to the Internet Explorer.

I'm testing it as we speak, and I'm slowly starting to fall in love with it.

And, both versions of Pluck are free, well, at least free of charge.

While I'm happy to see so many players constantly stirring up the market and offering more every day, I am somewhat worried that all of these options and choices just might be too much and too confusing for the "average" internet user. With RSS, it's not just a matter of choice between IE, Mozilla or Opera, but a matter of choosing among dozens and dozens of solutions.

Speaking of this, one of our readers just today commented to one of my articles that they as well have a free RSS aggregator plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. Check them out here: http://www.rsspopper.com

Haven't had a chance yet to review them in full, but they too look promising.

Yes, RSS is definitly all about choices.