Let’s get rid of RSS

Posted Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 8:58am in Business, Technology  | 

An attention grabbing headline I know. And of course I don’t mean let’s dismiss the technology behind RSS but last week I attended a discussion event held by New Media Knowledge in Soho’s local Pitcher and Piano, and a few comments got me thinking. The event, named Beers & Innovation 4: RSS Frontiers, was an informal discussion on the future of RSS and what the current conditions are for UK based RSS start ups.

Speakers from three UK RSS based businesses were each evangelising the technology, giving their thoughts on the future of it and, of course, detailing the benefits of their own company’s product. One thing that struck me though, which hasn’t really before was the idea of moving away from using the term ‘RSS’. I’d heard bloggers talk about it in the past but I’d dismissed it straight away. Their thoughts were it would help the less-technical people become less intimidated by the acronym. “Hmmm.” I thought. “Consumers have never had problems with acronyms before. Think DVD, VHS, USB, CD, TV, MP3 to name but a few.”

But the point Ivan Pope of Snipperoo made was that when he’s listening to the radio, he’s not concerned with the name of the frequency that’s bringing him his favourite songs. And come to think about it, neither am I. Do you? When you’re watching your favourite news programme (it should be news if you work in PR ;) ) are you bothered about the technology that’s bringing it to you? I’m not.

Two things: RSS is a fantastic new technology. But it’s all about integrating it seamlessly so the end user doesn’t have to think about it - it’s just there. Much like your TV and radio channels. Second thing: Start thinking about the content and less about the technology. Content, content, content.

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7 Comments

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Serge

Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 9:52am

Actually, I am quite content as it is, thank you very much… :-)

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Consejo de amigo « La central de datos

Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 12:01pm

[...] El resto del post también es muy interesante. Pero esta frase debería estar en la cabecera de todos los que podemos sufrir desvelos con la efectividad de las aplicaciones 2.0 [...]

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Simon Wakeman

Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 6:26pm

Spot on Stephen.

When WAP first hit the mobile market it flopped - partly due to overpromising advertising (”the mobile internet”) and partly because WAP meant nothing to the average user.

Once WAP receded behind the promise of compelling mobile content in the marketing messages, the service took off.

I can see RSS evolving in much the same way - it’s the customer benefit not the feature that will sell.

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Stephen

Thursday, September 21, 2006 at 6:48pm

Serge: Trust you! ;)

Simon: Thanks, that’s a great point. I didn’t know that about WAP.

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Simon Wakeman - Another big step for RSS

Friday, September 29, 2006 at 5:39am

[...] But the real issue is most users don’t know and don’t care what RSS is. So as long as we have RSS readers or RSS aggregators we have a problem. It’s the same as 3G - no-one cares what it is, but they probably do care that they can get video on their mobile phones. Stephen Davies had a post about this on PR Blogger a little while back. [...]

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MondoBlog » Blog » Fast RSS Links Collection - Num 8

Tuesday, October 31, 2006 at 6:13pm

[...] Let’s get rid of RSS [...]

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PRBLOGGER.COM » RSS on your TV

Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 10:20pm

[...] It would work like this: every RSS enabled platform (blogs, podcasts etc) would have its own unique code. So for example, my blog’s code would be something like ‘davies122′ (no particular reason, it’s just a code). This would be placed somewhere easily visibile on my blog or maybe I could include it on my business card and email signature. If a user decides he/she wants to subscribe to my ‘channel’ (I think ‘channel’ sounds more appropriate than ‘RSS feed’ in reference to TV) they would turn on their TV and enter the code with the remote control and voila. This way the end user wouldn’t have to worry about figuring out RSS. It would be just there… much like what I mentioned in a previous post. [...]

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