RSS Will Not Make the Mainstream
I have been reading all of the 2007 Predictions entries that have come across my desk and one of the predictions that seems to make the lists more than any others is that RSS will make it to the mainstream. I can’t help but think how completely and utterly wrong this is. While in the past we have lauded RSS as the next great thing after email, it really is nothing more but another way to read sites. In fact, RSS has been around in one form or another for a very long time.
AP Wire Services act like RSS syndicating their content to newspapers and websites. ESPN has a scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen that keeps you updated on scores and news. Have any of these revolutionized the way people go about their lives? Not really so why should RSS be any different? RSS is very useful for finding out when a site updates, but that is no different than actually going to the site itself to check on updates.
Email is completely different since it allows people to communicate with one another while RSS just acts as an asynchronous communication tool. Every major online communication breakthrough (IRC, IM, etc) succeeded because it handled communication in a many-to-many relationship. RSS on the other hand is simply a one-way 1-to-many relationship and this is what will prevent it from ever making it big and changing the lives of people.
I do think that sooner or later every technology we use that has access online will incorporate RSS into its services, but not necessarily behind a feedreader. Weather updates can be sent via RSS and nobody would care. People don’t go to sites searching for the orange feed button, they go looking for content. Besides, why site updates can be simply sent to your inbox why bother with feedreaders anyways (I’m speaking in general here since I use Google’s Reader).
As we try to push forward with the web we need to let go of the idea that every person on the web will grasp the idea of what a feed is. Instead, find ways to use feeds that don’t break the user’s experience. It doesn’t matter to them what is under the hood as long as the car moves.
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“RSS on the other hand is simply a one-way 1-to-many relationship and this is what will prevent it from ever making it big and changing the lives of people.”
I think you miss the point of RSS…shocking considering what 9rules does (or you’re just trying to start a debate).
RSS allows you to aggregate content from numerous sources very easily – instead of going to dozens of sites looking for updates, updates come to you in one central place.
At the core, it’s a huge time saver, which is important to everyone and for that reason alone there’s no doubt whatsoever that some breed of RSS will hit the mainstream.
By Adam Thody on January 3, 2007 12:39 pm
I think I agree with Adam. While I agree with the core point – RSS will not make the mainstream – parts of this just seem like flamebait.
The single biggest reason for RSS for me is what Adam said:
“RSS allows you to aggregate content from numerous sources very easily – instead of going to dozens of sites looking for updates, updates come to you in one central place.”
I’m sure that for people who only read a handful of sites with any regularity, RSS will continue to mostly be geekery.
By Marcus on January 3, 2007 12:53 pm
I hear you that RSS isn’t that new. Really it’s just a reiteration of HTML from back in the day when there weren’t designers involved.
I do think we’ll see more XML feeds, and I think we’ll see a ton more of them this year. 2007 will be the year of internet TV. It’s already begun with YouTube, and now the major TV channels are gearing up to compete. Their only trump card is the quality of programming they already own, so I think we’ll see more channels like MTV offering their long form content online and eventually syndicating it through the new TV. So, while I think we will see a wider adoption of feed readers, I agree that feed readers won’t be the mainstream in 2007. However, as XML feeds are the foundation for the TV channels of the future, such as in Democracy, I think we’ll see XML feeds an integral part of our 2007 mainstream internet experience.
By Justin Kistner on January 3, 2007 1:02 pm
I pretty much agree with you, Scrivs. I don’t think feed-reading, in it’s current incarnation, will ever be an activity my Mom does. I do think RSS (and/or Atom) will be used by other technolgies my Mom uses — so she’ll ultimately be using RSS, but she’ll never know it.
By Jeff Croft on January 3, 2007 1:12 pm
Right. Feedreading is never going to be a mainstream activity. Only my geekiest clients have ever gotten super excited about NetNewswire or Bloglines, and, even then, they tend to lose interest once they hit the 2-month-blogger’s burnout.
By Chris Blow on January 3, 2007 1:47 pm
Adam: You prove my point though. How many people in the general public have a need to aggregate 100 sites in one application? 9rules aggregates the content and acts like a giant RSS feedreader for the whole Network, but its not successful because of this.
Find me a group of 10 everyday people that struggle to keep up with all of their favorite sites and really don’t mind going to them to see if they are updated. Its more hardcore people that have to gather 200 feeds to constantly keep themselves updated on sites and even then how often do you read everything that crosses their desk?
This isn’t flamebait, but an argument against the people that do believe it will hit it big. Croftie summed it up better and I guess the title of the entry should be “Feedreading will not make the mainstream” because as I mention in the article RSS does have a purpose.
By Scrivs on January 3, 2007 1:53 pm
Scrivs: I agree, right now I probably couldn’t name 10 “normal” people who use feeds to their potential. Partly this is because most people have never heard of, or don’t know what RSS can do for them.
However, I can think of many different people who would really benefit from RSS, and would absolutely use it if they were exposed to it. My dad, for example, is a guy who reads easily a dozen newspapers every week, checks the weather constantly, and reads flyers like his life depends on it. He’s a perfect example of someone who would LOVE RSS aggregation (if I bothered to introduce him to it).
So, while he’s not someone who needs to keep up with dozens of websites, he’s someone who takes in a lot of data from many different sources, and spends a lot of time processing it. He’s someone that would save loads of time if that data was packaged in an aggregated, easy to read, sort and delete way…such as RSS. He’s not alone either.
So…you’re right, it’s not mainstream right now, but the concept of aggregating all kinds of information into one easy to digest format is brilliant, and with enough exposure that kind of technology will absolutely become mainstream because it fills a need common to pretty much everyone.
By Adam Thody on January 3, 2007 2:16 pm
“I do think that sooner or later every technology we use that has access online will incorporate RSS into its services, but not necessarily behind a feedreader. Weather updates can be sent via RSS and nobody would care. People don’t go to sites searching for the orange feed button, they go looking for content.”
Isn’t that saying it will go mainstream?
Having attempted to get my two siblings to use RSS, recently, I can attest that it is still too difficult for laymen to understand and use. What is needed is a good default (ie. Firefox automatically opening feeds in gReader).
Only then, when people need not copy .xml into a feed reader or search for an orange button will it become mainstream.
(Btw, I hope it does – I wouldn’t be able to consume as much great content without it)
By Kevin on January 3, 2007 2:24 pm
I guess in the sense that sooner or later everyone will indirectly be using feed services does mean that it will hit the mainstream. But directly going out and looking for new feeds to add will never happen.
Lets try an analogy here. Say every single sport and every game has a different TV channel. Now do you want to go out searching for each channel to find what you want or do you want one channel with one show to provide you with the highlight of the best of the best? This is why news sites work because people don’t want to go all over the place to find information. They like it all in one spot.
Sure with a feedreader I could go out and gather what I like and personalize, but most people don’t want to do that. They want the aggregation done for them and that is why I say RSS will never hit the mainstream to the point where individuals are hitting up feeds.
By Scrivs on January 3, 2007 2:58 pm
I agree. I think that as more and more people become web-savvy, it will be a nice way of cutting down on the time it takes to read news. But that being said, there are already so many aggregation systems (Pageflakes? etc.) and also sites that create newspaper-like setups (Google News?), that RSS really becomes a secondary concern. It’s kinda like deciding between having the paper delivered to your door or going to pick it up on your way to work. It might make a difference in when you read it, or where you read it, but ultimately having your paper withe morning coffee doesn’t make that much of a difference to the vast majority of people.
I do think that pushing RSS should continue — people just need to understand it’s simplicity to understand it’s usefulness — but like you, I’m tired of hearing how RSS is going to save the world.
By Jordan on January 3, 2007 3:28 pm
You forgot that one of Vista’s main features is RSS integration. Being able to store them and allow other applications access them. Subscribe to something in a browser and I can read it like email. All centrally stored nice and neat. Channel 9 (Scoble) did a video showing the new features and how easy it will be to exchange information.
Yes, RSS will become mainstream because a major operating system level integrated it in the software. Businesses and individuals will use it.
By Tyme on January 3, 2007 3:37 pm
Unless they have some sort of directory pointing me to where these feeds are I still don’t see how an operating system will make RSS go mainstream considering people will still have to go out and find the feeds.
By Scrivs on January 3, 2007 3:39 pm
The feeds are already all over the place. Most mainstream sites already have it. Any blog has it and the operating encourages the use of RSS/XML for the exchange of information – like updating calendars. This is the video. About 27 minutes in. That is why MS went with the orange Firefox button because people are used to seeing it. Once that orange button makes it on the OS more sites/businesses will use it.
By Tyme on January 3, 2007 5:14 pm
What I’m saying is do you see people going around looking for orange buttons on sites just to add to their OS? To me its not the same as sites using it for backend technologies which almost everyone does now already.
By Scrivs on January 3, 2007 6:09 pm
[...] There is an interesting discussion at Wisdump about RSS and if it will ever become mainstream, whatever they mean by that. Email is completely different since it allows people to communicate with one another while RSS just acts as an asynchronous communication tool. Every major online communication breakthrough (IRC, IM, etc) succeeded because it handled communication in a many-to-many relationship. RSS on the other hand is simply a one-way 1-to-many relationship and this is what will prevent it from ever making it big and changing the lives of people. [...]
By Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov » Will RSS ever go big? on January 3, 2007 9:38 pm
I think RSS’ integration into the mainstream will be more insidious like Tyme said.
those who’ve installed the google toolbar can hit the “Subscribe” button to pick up the RSS feed off a site they like.
when i got into blogging, i couldnt figure out RSS, no thanks to some techiness required.
now with services like my yahoo and my google making it easier for the everyman to subscribe to feeds, it smooths out the adoption curve.
save for content hounds, i dont see many people subscribing to 100 feeds (ok, besides the few of us). but it’s like cable TV. you have 100 channels (and might still have nothing to watch)…
i see a lot of web enabling technologies as providing consumers with choice and it’s not a forced adoption for sure.
RSS harkens back to about the mid 1990s, and i instigated some of this discussion with my blogging in 2007 meme. check it out at: http://www.whoisandrewwee.com/blogging/blogging-2007-meme/
By andrew wee on January 4, 2007 5:13 am
What’s interesting about feeds is that we all think of them as a simple button click to add them to a reader. As most of us are Web developers this makes a lot of sense and we use them frequently to keep up with various things. To Scrivs point the 95% of the population probably doesn’t know what feeds are, or why they should or could use them.
The problem that faces us today is finding a way to make feeds seem useful, and implement a more graceful way to use them. Feeds are going to exist mainstream or not.
IE7, Outlook 07, and Windows Vista all push feeds on their users, so I can’t help but think thats going to generate interest and push RSS more to the fore-front; however like I said earlier it will never make it mainstream without a more sophisticated method of introduction and usage.
By Kyle Johnson on January 4, 2007 10:45 am
“people don’t want to go all over the place to find information”
Maybe we need more people to create/offer feeds that are a pre-gathered, pre-grouped aggregation of their opinion of the best of (whatever the topic).
Also, I agree that our software needs to continue to evolve, in order to make it easier for the average user to subscribe. Our browsers, by default, should already be extremely easy to switch between aggregator versus browser. Or when we bookmark a page, to automatically have the option to subscribe to any available RSS feeds for the site. Maybe the browser toolbar — small, subtlety — by default, automatically displays a count of the number of feeds available; with a subscribe button?
IMHO, it’s those improvements that will make feeds become mainstream.
By Lena on January 4, 2007 4:16 pm
We’ll see in the new year if RSS disappears from the landscape.
Does anyone know about SET/SSL/PKI?
They’ve become transparent and power secure transactions.
In the same way, I think RSS will ‘disappear’ into the backend. A sign of technological maturity is that it evolves beyond it’s ‘whiz bang’ perception to becoming something that’s transparently useful.
By andrew wee on January 4, 2007 8:44 pm
I believe you’re right that RSS will not make it to mainstream, but your statement “RSS is very useful for finding out when a site updates, but that is no different than actually going to the site itself to check on updates.” — isn’t quite right, RSS is not like going to the site itself to check on updates. The very reason I use RSS is so that I don’t have to go to the site (or 300 sites) to check on updates. The updates come to ME, via my email inbox, or via my feed reader. For those who want to have the info come to them, instead of going around dozens of websites to check _if_ a website is updated, b/c sometimes they’re not, I love what RSS does for me.
By djchuang on January 7, 2007 10:20 pm
[...] RSS Will Not Make the Mainstream [...]
By Max Design - standards based web design, development and training » Some links for light reading (9/1/07) on January 8, 2007 10:04 pm
“Besides, why site updates can be simply sent to your inbox why bother with feedreaders anyways”
One of the great things about RSS feeds is that they replace mass mailouts with something far more suitable. Why manage a mailing list of thousands of privacy-sensitive email addresses, send thousands of copies of a single article through thousands of mail servers to thousands of inboxes, and handle thousands of bounce messages, just so that thousands of people are left having to sort their site updates from their regular email.
In fact you said it yourself…
“Email is completely different since it allows people to communicate with one another while RSS just acts as an asynchronous communication tool.”
Many people are on the receiving end of mass mailouts, and when they discover that these are far easier to manage via an RSS feed reader, and that they don’t even need to divulge their email address to the publishers, they’ll hop on board in no time.
By Paul Annesley on January 9, 2007 12:43 am
RSS is certainly not revolutionary and will not change the way people behave. That does not mean that it is not already in the mainstream. Amnesty International has a pretty broad spread of visitors to its web site and the two most popular (in read count) pages after the homepage are the news feed (RSS) and action feed (also RSS). We do not have a geekcore audience but the feeds have become our staple and are our main stream.
Maybe the hypothetical person in the street will never care about the amount of stuff coming into her inbox, so getting updates by email will continue. But in the last 6 or 7 years we have seen knowledge of spam and email overload complaints go from virtually zero to almost universal amongst corporate and small business users and home users are not going to be far behind. This must have an impact on mail out updates.
Most people will continue to use a web site to view online content; most people will continue to use email to communicate with their friends; but just because most people don’t drive BMWs doesn’t make them out of the mainstream.
By Mark on January 10, 2007 7:02 pm