What is Digg?19 Comments
- JohnBooty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I wish I could find the article now... about six months ago I read an article where the author made an excellent case for giving RSS a better and more consumer-friendly name in order to increase its appeal.
He made a good case for the fact that few consumers know what IEEE1394 is, but a fair number of consumers know what Firewire is.
I think RSS would really benefit from an improved, consumer-friendly name even if it was something silly like "FeedBlast" or "Magic Headlines" or something silly like that. We geeks already know what RSS is and why it's great, but let's give non-techies an idea of what the heck it IS, you know?
Unfortunately, I don't see anybody throwing their weight behind RSS. The Mozilla Foundation (and, I guess, Microsoft) missed a golden opportunity to do this around 24-36 months ago when the Internet Explorer team made the unusually community-minded (for Microsoft) decision to adopt the familiar orange RSS logo for use in Internet Explorer 7.
That would have been a great time to push a new name for the technology as well. Unfortunately, that opportunity is long past. Don't think we'll see another chance like that until IE8... see you in 2012, I guess.
(Note: my two example names obviously stink. They were just two off-the-top-of-my-head examples.) - patience, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Is this a suprise: Have you tried to explain to the average non-techie what RSS is?
I have sat through 1 hour meetings at two companies in which we tried to dumb down RSS for the bosses. I am still not convinced that they got it.
Is it like a podcast? What happens when I click on this orange icon? Xtm what? Yahoo?
This is too confusing? Lets put another flash intro, instead. - LecherousVenom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Pluck was a cool little app, but i too stopped using it when I started using Firefox. Lately, I've abandoned FF's RSS in favor of the Google Reader. I'm sure some "web 2.0" company will pluck Pluck - hello, Yahoo!?
- tastethevenom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4So that's -1 on this huge-ass list of RSS readers:
http://www.addtoany.com/?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdigg.com%2Frss%2Findex.xml&type=feed - Jammerdelray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Rss is great for keeping a eye on your favorite tops on digg
- patience, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@JB: Well said. Better trademark those names. I can see a web 2.0 app using those.
- patience, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I agree with your point. But when you are designing a site for a client, they want to know why all the sudden there is bright orange things on their website. You have explain and the explanation you have given would not get me hired as a designer.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3However, few people read them anyway...
I have one RSS feed running, and it's the one I made for my website. We might have 100 subscribers to it and maybe 10 of them read it. RSS has really proven itself ineffective except for maybe the 2 sites that read our content.
I hate to say it, but if it wasn't for it's low maintenance; I would have taken it down by now. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Re: I think RSS would really benefit from an improved, consumer-friendly name
Microsoft tried to rebrand RSS as "Web Feeds" but relented after the RSS community balked. Everybody accused Microsoft of trying to "embrace and extend" RSS into a Microsoft proprietary technology, which, in a way, they wound up doing anyway with their "Simple List Extensions." - Lagged2Death, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There are adequate RSS readers built-in to more-critical software packages, like Thunderbird, Opera, etc. And there are free on-line RSS readers (Bloglines, Netvibes,etc) that are in some ways superior (read feeds from any PC, no local storage, more efficient use of bandwidth, etc). So I can see how it would be hard to earn any money selling an RSS reader. That doesn't mean RSS itself is in trouble.
- Dotnetsky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3You don't need to "explain to the average non-techie" what RSS is. The readers built into IE 7 and Firefox make this completely unneccesary. Web based readers like Google's personalized home page and Google Reader (which you can place on your google personalized home page) do the same. In sum: the "average non-techie" doesn't need to know ***** about RSS. All they need to know is they can put "Cool stuff" on their Reader or whatever it is they use. So, get real.
- gharding, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1RSS just needs to go away and be replaced with something along the lines of a "news push" service, instead of wasting bandwidth on polling.
- SpookyET, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I use netvibes. I like it. It also has a meebo plugin. It has become my IM app of choice too.
- 3dge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Is it really that hard to explain? "This icon lets people sign up for a 'news feed' from your site. It means they get to read about all the new stuff you put on the website, but it saves you money on bandwidth. It's a little bit complicated so not everybody uses it, but people who do tend to be technically savvy and spend lots of money."
Besides, it seems like these days you can get away with the "radio beam" symbol instead of the "RSS" logo, or even none at all - are there any newsreaders that can't auto-discover anymore? Then you can call it a "news feed" which seems like it would be more comprehensible.
I know, I know, it's impossible to underestimate the intelligence of a client... - cheftony, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree that RSS is not easily explainable in the non tech world. As a fairly tech savvy person, I was a little unsure of how to get the feed, plug into a reader...etc. I got it, and it's simple, but I was a little "late to the party" myself. Try explaining to a 50 somthing, who likes what you do, but doesn't go past email and web surfing... something easier would be a great idea. Our (I'm 37) generation should be pretty tech savvy from growing up with it, but many are not.
Tony - intangible, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Rename them "Info Broadcast" for the normies.
- qubert55, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Aaaw, I liked Pluck... Anyway, for digg, I use DiggWatch: http://www.diggwatch.co.nr . It makes a cool animation with all the digg headlines. Macs only...
- sbovisjb1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The Google customizable homepage was more than enough for me. And the only thing i have ever used an RSS feed for was either Azureus when im on linux or uTorrent for windows.
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