RSS Feeds are not dead…yet

RSS feeds have never been sexy. The name itself is not a line you will drop at a romantic moment and even as an avid internet user the idea of something sending you automatic content from websites or blogs has always sounded terribly efficient but not very glamorous. So, it was not surprising to hear that RSS are dead following the emergence of Twitter or any other form of microblogging. Unfortunately, I have to disagree on this one.

First, Twitter is a lot more than a simple RSS feed and if you use it only for that, well, I am not sure you have understood the concept. Of course some companies use it like that, especially in the news industries. But to be honest, who would like to have a conversation with Rupert Murdoch through their Sky News Twitter account? It is true that RSS feeds are used by a minority of users, but is it not the same with Twitter; 36 million out of 1.5 billion people who have access to the internet, does not seem that much to me.

So let’s try to rehab the RSS feed and to give them some good PR. First, RSS feed enables you to save a lot of time. I know some people like to go from one site to another, but it is better to receive everything in the same place: you can quickly spot what you are interested in and start reading.  And this makes particular sense as many websites, especially news websites, can be incredibly confusing: more content, more sections, more links. To sum it up, more ways to get lost and not necessarily finding what you are looking for. With RSS feeds, everything is quite straightforward and you do not miss anything.

Now, I know that you are going to strike back at me with the information overload problem. As you get all this content sent to you and you keep adding more feeds it might be hard to manage. My answer is that you may not be using the right tools and if you are you might not be using them appropriately. Netvibes and iGoogle are really useful tools to visualize first hand what you are interested in, but personally my favourite one is Google Reader used with the Firefox Add-on BetterGreader.

It has never been this easy to read content this quick and easy. And in case you wish to increase the filtering of your RSS feed, you can use YahooPipes to sort your feeds the way you want them. If you happened to find this too complicated or time consuming you can also turn to Alltop, which offers pages that are already built on different topics, such as Twitter or LinkedIn.

Now, it does not mean that RSS feed are the best thing in the world. Twitter and Facebook have made it really easy to find and share information, but if there is one service that might replace in a way RSS feed, that would be Friendfeed. Of course, it is limited to one part of the geek community, but it is gaining some traction. Friendfeed, however, is the incarnation of real-time with its real-time display and search.

I know what you are thinking: “But Friendfeed is based on RSS feed!” Yes, but in this field it seems that we are more susceptible to progressive change than a revolution: the king is dead, long life to the king!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Other Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.