Here’s another technology being given the Real Time Web treatment: RSS. There’s PubSubHubbub (PuSH), created by the mother of all search engines and there’s rssCloud, created by the father of RSS. You can tell just by the people behind both projects that this is a Big Deal.
I won’t get into the technical details—mostly because I can’t—but these two protocols are built on the same idea of push notifications instead of pull, which is the current setup. Feed aggregators won’t have to check every now and then for any updates; they’ll come right in when they’re published.
The score seems to be in PubSubHubbub’s favor right now, and it certainly calls attenion based on name alone. But Dave Winer had the idea as early as 2001. And who knows what will happen in the next few months.
What matters is the feed reading system is getting a much needed upgrade especially with all this talk of it being dead. RSS? Dead?
Like Bwana, I scoff at people who run through the streets proclaiming “RSS is dead! Long live Twitter!” Aside from the obvious non-parallel comparison between a protocol and a web app, he explains it nicely:
Those who claim RSS is dead don’t realize their newfound love for Twitter would be moot if it were not for RSS. Breaking news on Twitter comes from two main sources in my mind: websites and personal experience. For tech news, I doubt there is much personal experience for news unless there’s a conference or an event. Most juicy, 0-day news comes from websites. These websites often have a… wait for it… RSS feed. The race to post tech news first on Twitter usually stems from who can refresh their RSS reader the fastest.
So here’s to RSS: I’m not sure what the Web would do without you. Pretty sure that’s how many feel about Twitter too, but let’s talk again when it goes from webapp/API level down to the protocol level. And when it scales properly, of course.
Postscript: Both PuSH and rssCloud support Atom. RSS and Atom are both feed delivery mechanisms, but you won’t see people yelling “feeds are dead!” or “Atom is dead!”, as they have ignored any distinctions among the three for ages now. So for the sake of simplicity I mentioned only RSS above.
In an effort to raise awareness about syndication on the Web, Daily Blog Tips has started campaigning for another online event: RSS Awareness Day, which happens on May 1st.
Now I have got to wonder why we have to be so specific and tackle only RSS feeds and not feeds and syndication in general. Why call it RSS Awareness Day when it should be called Feed Awareness Day instead?
And they wonder why
Copyblogger asks, “will RSS ever go mainstream?” Again, that’s asking the wrong question! It’s like explaining how Gmail works, instead of how email does. And they’re wondering why very few people are using RSS—correction—feeds.
Eliminate the confusion
Choosing to shine the spotlight on RSS alone becomes another obstacle to actually understanding—and not just becoming aware of—web feeds. It confuses the very people we want to educate.
RSS is a standard, not the standard. The default feed format for WordPress blogs may be RSS, but on Blogger, it’s Atom. You can’t even guarantee that blog platforms offer RSS feeds. How will you explain that to people who unwittingly discover this fact? And how will you explain all the other buttons that are not labeled RSS, but XML, Atom, or RDF instead? You’d be opening an unnecessary can of worms.
Some friendly reminders:
- RSS is a feed format.
- RSS stands for several things, including “Really Simple Syndication”, “RDF Site Summary”, and “Rich Site Summary”
- (Note: RDF stands for Resource Document Format.)
- RSS is a feed format written in XML.
- (Note: XML stands for Extensible Markup Language.)
- Atom is another feed format.
- (Note: Atom stands for nothing.)
If you’ve been on the Web long enough you might appreciate all these acronyms, but ordinary people don’t. Do them a favor and make it simple for them. Do not recite the list above to them (that was just there for your geeky pleasure). Just explain what you can do with a feed, and how easy it is to use.
Awareness, truth, simplicity
The feed icon is a standard for not just RSS, but all types of web feeds. And just as this icon has helped us understand feeds in a symbolic, abstracted way, we should do the same for those who haven’t understood yet.
Please, if you’re going to start a campaign about awareness for normal people, convince them how easy it is for them to participate. Don’t geek it up. Do it right.
I almost got feed fatigue (does anyone use that expression?) yesterday. It was my first day back at work, and it consisted solely of answering e-mails and scanning my RSS feeds, which amassed to 1,000+ stories, which in reality was more like 10,000+ stories!
Now, I’m a harsh RSS user. If I don’t find myself following up on posts in a subscription, I cancel it. Having too many feeds in the feed reader is just stressful. However, I still have a fair amount of sources, so they got piled up over the holidays.
Three things struck me, when scanning the feeds.
- I clicked through more often on partial feeds.
- Images does work in feeds as well, not just in post.
- It sucks to read in a feed reader, but it sucks even more to read in an ugly designed site.
Mayhap not the most stunning revelations of 2008, but nevertheless, they were painfully obvious when I had to handle so much content.
I prefer my feeds like I prefer my content listings, with read more links and images to lighten them up. In other words, I don’t want to read 50 paragraphs in my feed reader, more like five and then if I’m hooked I’ll click through. Add an image and you’re more likely to succeed.
How do you prefer your feeds?
