Microfeeds
So there's an example or two of companies using RSS for press releases: Dick talks about it here and Jason talks about it here. I think the big idea here is that we can transform a static piece of information into an ongoing conversation with potential customers. By representing the information as a syndication feed, it becomes a "living press release". Potential customers can "subscribe" to that press release and the company can issue news and updates related the release as new content items. Cool, eh?
Following the life of a press release is an example of what we might call a "microfeed". Think of a piece of content as anchoring a discussion. The other obvious example of a microfeed would be the comments on a blog item. One approach is to have a feed associated with each item ... in fact, something like that is proposed with the includedComments module.
The problem that emerges isn't that there are so many feeds to generate -- that's a piece of cake on the publisher's side, as it's just another page. The problem is that the traditional three-pane nntp^H^H^H^H RSS reader isn't the right model for dealing with potentially hundreds of microfeeds, many of which might never be heard from again. I'm not sure what the corrent interaction model is, but it probably has to do with recognizing these microfeeds in the context of the original parent, treating them like "child feeds". The list of feeds that I'm following probably looks a lot more like a big threaded discussion than a serial list of feeds.
Then again, the right answer is probably something completely different. What other ideas are out there?