Just stumbled across an old (2002) discussion at Intertwingly where Dave Winer makes this point in the comments:
Here’s another problem with using RSS subscriptions to solve this problem — you have to remember to unsubscribe. Further, it puts the burden to remember in a place where there’s little incentive to remember. But bandwidth costs on desktop aggregators are starting to become a concern for some, and only likely to be more so in the future.
Now, one area where people track conversations with grit and determination (and sometimes a wideboy image)is sales and CRM. So how about treating feeds as “customers”? It might allow us to use CRM software (and the various bits of sophistication it brings) to the party.
For instance – and this is off the top – let’s say you aggregate with something like Newsgator – an MS Outlook-based tool. And lets say you also have an MS Outlook-based tool such as MX Contact, shouldn’t you then be able to set up a system where you can track which feeds are dry, which are your key “customers” and which are new opportunities?
Think I’ll have a play around with it and report back
[Update: Further thinking (green with envy) about the Blogwalk discussions on blogging behind the firewall due to start happening this weekend and was thinking that this sort of approach could have a number of benefits – relating feeds/comments to tasks on an Exchange server etc.]