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150 Comments
- chrisgeleven, on 10/12/2007, -6/+49Use http://reader.google.com/
Extremely easy to use and pretty self explanatory. - Zjm7891, on 10/12/2007, -2/+36In my experience, 47% of statistics are made up on the spot
- omatsei, on 10/12/2007, -3/+33Maybe it's just me, but I have over 100 feeds in my RSS reader (Sage extension on Firefox)... if I didn't have Sage, god only knows how much time I'd waste in going to websites that don't have anything that I want to read. Hell, now that I think about it, I don't think I go to sites that I don't have on RSS anymore.
For me, it's just easier to click on the feed name and see if there's anything worth reading rather than waiting for the inevitable ads and Flash animations to load.
I wonder how much bandwidth I've saved from using RSS instead of just surfing around blind? - tsunamisteve, on 10/12/2007, -5/+32I'm a news whore and RSS feeds make perfect sense for me, yet I hardly use them. I enjoy visiting sites because of what they look like. After all, all you web developers aren't working long hours to make lines of code that only produce text are you? I think RSS should remain a back-end technology like it is for podcasting. People use it and they don't even know it.
- rahulb, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26RSS is a useful technology, at least I feel so. Granted that the average net user doesn't use it that much, but for anyone who is hell bent on getting the latest news from all kinds of sources, its a godsend. I feel people who still aren't comfortable with desktop feed readers should try out online ones like Bloglines or the Google Reader. Its a useful enough technology to be dedicated atleast a couple of hours to, and that I guess is enough to atleast get anyone up and running.
- etruscan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18RSS is pretty straight forward. From the users end, it's actually quite simple, but it's been made intimidating by this acronym.
"RSS is still unknown" - this will change with IE7, which has integrated RSS. In a few weeks, the rest of the world is going to start using RSS, folks. Time to get on it. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15"I'm a news whore and RSS feeds make perfect sense for me, yet I hardly use them. I enjoy visiting sites because of what they look like."
I'm the same, except I actually use RSS feeds. My google.com/ig page is full of design blogs and news sites. The page only pulls in the headlines, so I just scan the headlines for interesting stuff and, when I find something, visit the site from the link. Best of both worlds. - atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13For pages that don't get upgraded for days or weeks feeds are a must (I can't stand the idea to keep refreshing a page for day till I get something new ), however for news it might become very soon unbearable, if you get dozens of feed items every half an hour it become overwhelming -- people that try RSS don't have a good mix of RSS feeds and get annoyed with them pretty soon. It's also something more difficult to grasp than tabbed browsing and even tabbed browsing is a concept that some people just don't get. In my experience 30 % of computer users have problems with double-clicking and right button clicking and the like... and other 20% can't start a program if they don't have the icon on the desktop -- yes, many computer users (and many people in general) are morons.
- vypergts, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14I think it has more to do with the fact that *most* non-geeks are still using IE6 and as long as they can access MSN.com or AOL or whatever lam3r page they get their news from they really don't care or even have the desire to learn about RSS. Like the fact that most people only call the same 5 people on their cell phone, unless there is a need most people don't go outside their regular surfing habits. Geeks on the other hand, by-nature, constantly want to be up on the latest tech (i.e. RSS) but to the casual user it's completely foreign.
- Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14Top 5 reasons why top N reason lists are beaten to death.
- ShaolinTiger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Same here, I use google.com/ig too
I love it as I use gmail aswell and the recently added tabs feature is great as my page was getting cluttered, I can now have a tab for each of the subjects I'm interested in with my e-mail, bookmarks and personal stuff like blogs on the first page.
RSS is fantastic, I'd hate to go back to trawling through sites hour after hour to see if they've updated, or more importantly updated anything interesting. - Hellfire51, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11It's not all that hard, it is "Really Simple".
- mleaman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I hear email is pretty useless too. :P
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15Never found a use for RSS. I'd say that for the vast majority of users it's a completely uninteresting, even useless, technology.
- adstretch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8It's built into safari.
- ABadInAlbany, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I'm a news whore, not unlike tsunamisteve, but still don't see the need for RSS. I'm easily able to keep up on two or three local news sites, two or three national news sites, and two or three tech and one or two science news sites without having a feed aggregator on my machine.
- evilTak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I came here from an RSS link...
- wildster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4i think http://www.netvibes.com/ is much better than anything else going
- Recluse, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I could never find a reader that I liked until Sage came along. After that I haven't wanted or needed anything else. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/77/
- kapowaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Hogwash. The entire point of RSS is that it's a *standard* that can be read by any compliant newsreader; you don't need one single application to come to the forefront for the format to be successful, especially as there are so many good ones already out there. Microsoft are not fundamental to the success of RSS - if that was the case then they would make their own rather than work with the existing standards.
FWIW I found the article to be somewhat wishy-washy. The points themselves don't hold up to close examination - saying that the technology is flawed because they break is asinine. Websites break too, you know, and guess what, we're still using the web! It's still an early adoption technology, but with the ubiquity of the orange icon everywhere, it won't be long before people take the trouble to find out what it is and start using it. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Thats the difference right there. I would guess the average feed user has 20+ feeds. Viewed in a river of news format it is very digestable. Not only could you not feasibly view those 20+ news sources often, it wouldn't make sense if they only posted one article every week or so. In a reader you can aggregate all the high volume and low volume streams into one location. With feeds you can also view pre-filtered posts. For example, I'm interested in fixed gear bikes. Instead of going to Flickr to search for pictures of them, I set up a query and whenever a picture with a "fixed gear" tag is uploaded to Flickr, I get it in my feed reader.
- jellygraph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4i havent seen a single implementation of an rss feed reader that is useful for a non-technical person... full stop.
some stick it in the browser (as if that is useful)
some stick it in a remote application, whose interface is too poor to convey an intuative understanding of the power of rss, much less any cool advanced features
and then theres the web based rss feed reader, which sadly means that it is completely seperate and non-integratable with your OS... which is kinda the point. - cazabam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4When was this written? I ask because of this:
"If web browsers included feed readers by default it would probably increase RSS usage 10 fold. But since none of the web browser makers seem to be interested in trying to do this RSS may remain unkown and unpopular for years to come."
FireFox, Opera, Camino and Safari all support RSS. In fact, out of all the GUI browsers I have the misfortune to use, only IE is lagging behind.
I personally use RSS a lot to keep track of news and events without having to spend the time to look manually. Yes, I may only save 5 minutes a time, but when I'm at work or otherwise engaged it's a nice way of keeping track of the world. Unlike some people, I don't have infinite browsing time ;-) - PanteroBlanco, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Whoever wrote this article is thinking too hard.
This geek doesn't use RSS feeds because they provide little benefit above just going to the sites. It isn't that hard to glide over to Bookmarks and select Slashdot, Digg, CNN, or ArsTechnica. - brundlefly76, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I showed my girlffriend how to use Bloglines the other day and to my surprise she was hooked immediately. I think its one of those things like TiVo where you have to either be an early adopter or have someone show you firsthand.
- cyberdork, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The reason it's not popular is that most people use IE and never even heard about news readers. The other people use Firefox, it supports RSS feeds but in a very unattractive and almost useless way.
I belong to a small minority of Safari users and I use RSS feeds all the time. I for example put the engadget feed in my bookmark bar and if there is a new story I get a small (1) behind the bookmark name. This is why in my opinion Safari has the most useful RSS integration of all browser. Once you have used this feature you will never go back. - toddmoe, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Well Microsoft is betting on RSS, RSS reading capability is built into the core plumbing of Vista enabling you to subscribe to feeds right through folders on your desktop. Its also built into IE7, which if i am not mistaken is everyones favorite browser on these forums :)
So its probably not going to be years to come as he indicates in the article, its going to be until its easy and I don't have to download another piece of software. - Rosewood, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10Im sad you are getting the red thumb because this is how I feel about RSS. When I have tried it ... it was pretty pointless. All the sites I check anyways I would check anyways. I don't need an rss feed of digg when I'm going to have to come to the site anyways.
Also, I still don't get why sites are so gung ho about rss when it is bandwidth that gets eaten without any real advertisement support. - doncarajo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think it's because most people don't spend so many hours in front of their computers that they need constant updates of what's going on in the web. It's called having a life ;)
- DisposableRob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"Also, I still don't get why sites are so gung ho about rss when it is bandwidth that gets eaten without any real advertisement support."
A lot of sites throw ads into their RSS feeds (Gawker Media blogs for example). These are ads that only appear in the RSS feed and not on the regular page. - winstonyw, on 06/07/2008, -0/+3Dugg, not because of the content.. but because of the insightful comments here.
Somehow, the reasons as stated in the article are technologically-inclined. However, as can be seen from the comments, RSS is not popular, not because of technology, but because of the way in which people browse websites and keep up to date with news. It's a lifestyle thing which many feel would not be be improved even if they have a RSS reader at this moment in time?
Some people like to read news along with looking at the design of the site. That's just it, and possibly difficult to change, because some people just like to enjoy the design.
Personally I use a RSS reader because I can take 30s off my work every 30min, browse at a single site for the latest updates to sites like digg, del.icio.us etc, and get back to work, or take a longer break by going through the interesting links. That's time saved, rather than having to browse thru 10+ sites every 30min? - 4vector, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3how about you give me five reasons why i should use rss
- slartibartphast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Maybe the google home page isn't a popular as I thought, but I think it's great. rss is
the heart of it, and if a novice can't figure out how to add them there, they never will!
The success of rss is in the proper use of them as an underlying tech, so users don't have to know rss is even there.
BTW one of the best uses of feeds is for sites like fatwallet where the forum feeds update quite often, try some of those. - PanteroBlanco, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7It's disturbing that someone actually dug you down.
No one's going to take your RSS away from you if you use it, people. There's no one trying to "stamp out" RSS, or bury it with an opposing product. - antiorario, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2what's email?
;-) - jangoman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Very interesting, but I think there are only really 2 points addressed.
1. Its not very widely known about
2. Its a bit unreliable
The other points seem to be just explanations of why its unreliable. This leaves point number 1 a little bit neglected, which is a shame considering that its probably the more important of the two. - knyghtryda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2RSS is nice, but most people (read, about 95% of the population) do NOT need to keep track of that many sites at once. I have personally have 10 feeds in firefox, but thats 5 tech deal sites and 5 tech news sites, and yeah, I think thats a bit excessive, but part of my job is staying on top of tech news, so I can kinda justify it. Most people are just content with their google homepage or maybe CNN or BBC. Personally, I think one of the biggest drawbacks to RSS is the thing that makes it great, which is that it strips all non-essential information out, which leaves the rest kinda dry and boring to look at, even when its well formatted. People like pretty things.
- mtgarden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Personally, the biggest problem with RSS is the lack of quality user interface. IE7 is pretty good, but I still love the Sage implementation in Firefox. I've never figured out how to use RSS in Firefox and I hate every stand alone reader that I've tried. In the end, Sage is intuitive and simple.
That said, RSS feeds keep me up to date on the news by letting me check out just the stories of interest. That way I can can absorb more pertinent (to me) news faster. - irregardless, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Digg, for one, offers custom feeds for search terms. I've bookmarked a couple in my news reader and whenever new articles containing those terms are posted to digg, i know it almost immediately.
It's not a bad deal. - implementor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I know a lot of people who use RSS feeds, but they're all on Livejournal and use the RSS feeds on their friends page. The RSS feeds they've subscribed to are displayed right along with their friends posts, and it makes it far easier by putting those feeds in a place where they'll be able to easily access them - on a webpage they're already looking at.
- hivemindz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not angry or against RSS. I just wish it was better. I use the RSS reader on this website daily. My concerns for how popular RSS is comes from me having to send weekly emails to website owners about broken RSS feeds and not getting any response. This is just the opposite of when I email them about a bad link. Links seem to get fixed. RSS feeds do not. Sometimes I even get a "sorry we will not be support RSS any longer."
Many of the comments about RSS are very insightful and informative. I am happy to learn about Sage and the fact that Opera has a built in RSS reader. I will give them a try.
I did try and not make this article too geeky by talking about standards and formats and the fact that unlike a web page a RSS page is very unforgiving. I will save those things for a later blog.
But all of this aside there is one question that keeps nagging at me. To those of you that are commenting on how easy and useful RSS is the question is:
"Do you think of yourself as a geek?"
I do consider myself one which is also one of the reasons that I wrote this article. I also do hope that this article reaches those that have not tried RSS and makes them curious about the possibilites. - dgh1973, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's a shame really, they are pretty useful but yeah... they don't seem to really be all that popular or widely accepted.
I made a system at my work for converting some of our system alert traffic into rss feeds but everyone seemed a bit underwhelmed, despite the fact that it seemed to work fine and required no user maintenance at all once in place. - keeperofkeys, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In a nutshell: this article is saying that RSS is not popular because nobody knows what it is, and because feeds often break.
The first, IMO, is true, but will soon change once most people have IE7 (or FF2.0+) on their computers. (Not me personally: I use the Flock browser, and have been using netvibes for my RSS feeds for a couple of years; but the general population is only just beginning to use Firefox and up to v2.0 you had to look pretty hard for its RSS support.)
The second point is so far outside my experience it hardly bears comment. The del.icio.us feeds used to fail on netvibes, but that is now fixed. Otherwise, I've rarely had a problem.
This article is kind of "I'm pissed off that some of my RSS feeds broke". Not dugg. - DisposableRob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"i havent seen a single implementation of an rss feed reader that is useful for a non-technical person"
I think the most "non technical" reason I use an RSS browser is for the daily comics. Everyday, the ten or so comics I read get updated and I can view them all on the same page. Or I can pick a particular one and view an entire month's worth of that comic. Too bad that most of the comics feeds are unofficial as they can be unreliable and suddenly get removed. - Onibus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I reached this page through the Google personalized homepage :)
RSS ftw. - edmicman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@DisposableRob
What do you use to aggregate comic? I've been looking for something for awhile, and nothing seems to stick. I did find some php script, but it was an entire server solution or something, and seemed more involved than what I needed. I just want to have a single page that scrapes/loads/imports my handful of comics each day, with links to their respective websites. - bmw@, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"found this article in the first place - in NNW" - @Gee4orce, hear, hear! Me too. NNW is always up, as is Thunderbird. I live in news and mail.
As for site design? Pah! Content is king. I like looks too, and I appreciate a good design when I see one -- but only *after* my newsreader directs me to it. - trylleklovn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I used RSS to get to this article..
My father has RSS feeds in his firefox ..
So does my mother.. - Sandkat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3iTunes? Podcasts? Hello?
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