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The rise of RSS?
By bear | June 22, 2008
Quite a few years ago, when I was producing websites and regularly reading whitepapers on emerging web technologies, the orange RSS icon would often raise itself up as a great hope for the future and a working example of the power of XML schema. The consumer-centric side of me however could just not see its value; who knew what it meant, who maintained an RSS reader, who could actually bother with it?
I’ve lost track of the number of times an executive asked me what it meant and how it could be used, only to walk away from my explanation with a blank look that said “brain processing information delete-command now”.
Quite simply, RSS readers had no relevance to general consumers. There was no practical way to incorporate feeds into everyday websites unless you were a techo. It rambled along as a small orange icon on the bottom on news stories that no-one knew how to use.
Of course, web 2.0 sites have changed all that. Blogs have most certainly provided tools to incorporate content feeds via RSS (or similar) for quite sometime, although in the main these have remained until recently in the domain of the digerati. Facebook has made a significant contribution to the spread of RSS amongst the general universe, since it has given consumers a custom home page where they can add their own content to help build their personal image and brand (a core driving motivator for most consumers, and indeed the secret to Facebook’s success).
Personal content aggregators, such as iGoogle or netvibes, have taken this even further by creating a true personal space where an individual can draw together all of their favoured news sources, sort them, organise them, and have them on hand whenever they feel the need for a quick info fix.
The humble RSS is finally building a consumer proposition. It is useful, personal, contextual, permission based, self configured & available from most content sources, and can now inhabit the virtual home of almost every consumer. More importantly however is that with the mobile internet now giving consumers personal 24/7 access, aggregated RSS feeds will soon be able to follow the consumer everywhere.
We may not think of this feed technology as we go about our daily digital travels, but it is a humble and hard-working little friend that is driving much of the consumer value of our web 2.0 world. Respect where respect is due.
Topics: The Machine - Social & Semantic Construction | No Comments »