RSS stands for “Rarely Seen Sites”
Is RSS unproven technology? The Browser writes: “Well, here’s a reality check: Dead2.0 points to recent research that shows that only 1 in 10 people have even heard of RSS, and a mere 2 percent actually use it. That’s a pretty lousy adoption rate for a technology which dates back to 1999.”
Though 80% of my web use is via RSS, it will be interesting to see if really simple syndication really catches on with a mass audience. Part of me thinks that many users still enjoy the “experience” of visiting a website rather than just having text and image content pushed out to them. That desired experience probably fuels the other 20% of my web use.
4 Comments
I’ve never really thought RSS was “catching on” because it’s such a geek tool. RSS is handy, but people want interaction and emotion in their experience just as much as they want information, and RSS focuses more on delivery of information. So many times we forget that the world is much bigger than what’s on the Internet.
Like splitbamboo said it needs to be mashed “with something that regular people do every day” in order for it to become popular. Key words being regular people.
The beauty of the www wasn’t Tim Berner’s Lee’s mad coding skills, it was the magic of clickable text!
I hope RSS *doesn’t* have to become a household name. I hope the RESULTS of RSS happen so deftly that nobody has to even wonder what it is.
RSS needs to be a backend technology, NOT a front-end one.
Doesn’t the fact that many people don’t use it mean that it has a large potential market of people that could start using it?
The closest integration I’ve played with is a BYU Sports blog I created. I added a BYU Sports email list that pulls the RSS feed and sends out those items as an email list.
I’m considering doing the same for LDS News. What do you think?
To me it is technology that needs to underlie the infrastrucure of the internet. One of those “don’t-need-to-know-how-it-works-(or that it even exists)-it-just-works-things”.
Mash that with something that regular people do every day, get a 1000th of a cent per transaction, and you have a real business.