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The Importance of RSS

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the feeds-are-the-new-push dept.

unfoldedorigami writes "Kevin Hale of Particletree wrote an interesting essay about the importance of RSS and speculates that the success of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and Technorati has got Google worried about subscribe becoming the new search. Hale thinks this is the reason behind why they've become so interested in feed reading and the procurement of revenue from them."

11 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Web-based RSS Feed Reader by metlin · · Score: 5, Insightful


    One solution would be to provide a single point of web-based RSS feed reader of sorts, where people could not only add their bookmarks, but also just log in and read their favorite feeds.

    Imagine this - if Google could provide a good UI and simple but feature rich interface, I could log onto the equivalent of Google FeedReader and add my feeds there.

    A sort of Google-news for RSS feeds, of sorts.

    I mean, they could move people from other webmails to Gmail, this shouldn't be too hard, either. Build a nice system where people can add in their feeds and read them on the web in a non-cluttered, nice, manner and people _will_ use your system.

    That would give them more power to search and catalogue user preferences - although from a Big Brother perspective, that isn't necessarily a good thing.

    I sense a good opening for a web-application!

    1. Re:Web-based RSS Feed Reader by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is really funny, in a shake your head in disgust kind of way.

      The reason that people turn to something like RSS is because it lets them get to the meat faster without the extraneous crap. Searching through google results exposes you to it, searching through your various favorite sites in your bookmarks exposes you to it, etc. RSS does not, and therefore people gravitate towards it.

      Advertising IS extraneous crap. If you put it in RSS feeds, people will no longer have the motivation to use it. You'll be breaking the tool.

      It's such a joke. A new information-location technology comes out that is more effective at filtering out crap, the public jumps onboard because they don't want to see the crap, the IT guys jump onboard because that's where the people are and try to make a profit by forcing the public to waste their time looking at someones crap, and the people leave for greener pastures.

      Thing is, people came to recognize that it's not the technology that was important, but the providers of the technology... they're the ones you trust (or don't trust) not to betray you, break the tool, and waste your time.

      Google didn't rise to prominance because they have wonderful technology... lots of companies have wonderful technology. They rose to prominance because people came to trust them to filter the crap and give them what they're looking for better than their contemporaries.

      Now, google is a big publicly traded company. They shove some crap in your face when you do a search, carefully weighing just how much crap they can get away with. They corrupt and poison the very infrastructure of the web itself with their "replace key words in content with div-pops and links to advertising in a way that obfuscates the fact that is advertising until you have already been exposed to it" technology. I can't speak for others, but while flash ads and banners merely annoy me, this particular technique actually makes me angry as hell.

      While there is a large amount of inertia to overcome, this sort of shit will eventually spell the end of their relevance, because people will eventually come to realize that it doesn't really matter what the technology of the moment is, they will come to know that google is going to pervert it and waste their time in the name of profit.

      This happened to sites like yahoo and msn and that provided the opportunity for google to rise to prominance. Now it's happening to google and providing an opportunity for another to rise to prominance.

      Not a moment too soon if you ask me. If I never see another IntelliText link slip through my adblocker, it will be too soon.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    2. Re:Web-based RSS Feed Reader by Baricom · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Advertising IS extraneous crap.
      Yes, but it also pays the bills. If the web content companies don't advertise, what business model should they use?

      They corrupt and poison the very infrastructure of the web itself with their "replace key words in content with div-pops and links to advertising in a way that obfuscates the fact that is advertising until you have already been exposed to it" technology.
      Are you claiming this is Google's idea? I've seen this, but never in association with Google. You later put a name to it - "IntelliText [sic]" - but IntelliTXT is run by Vibrant Media, which doesn't appear to have any ties with Google. Please provide a counterexample.

  2. Amusing by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like how Slashdot posts a story about the importance of RSS, but their own RSS service will ban you for 3 days if you just look at it funny.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  3. How about ... by Numair · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Search being the new search? Seriously; these online search engines haven't improved much in the past 5 years (yes, it's been 5 years since Google started growing by leaps and bounds, became the Yahoo default, and amazed us all ...).

  4. I doubt it will replace search engines... by pthor1231 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean, come on. RSS feeds are useful for stuff that you check daily, hourly, etc. This is usually stuff you are familiar with, and would know how to find in the first place. On the other hand, if I want to find something out about a subject I'm not particularly familiar with, I go to google and search.

    1. Re:I doubt it will replace search engines... by Qzukk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While I seriously doubt that the advent of RSS will affect Google much at all, Google would probably rather you search for something, then forget about where to find it and have to search for it again next time, rather than finding it once and subscribing.

      Besides, even if RSS becomes The Next Intarweb(TM), we'll still need to have someone index the billions of RSS feeds.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  5. Seriously... by jd · · Score: 4, Insightful
    RSS is pretty crappy, as it is a point-to-point protocol. What would be good would be if websites sent out multicasts when an update occured, as then all interested parties could monitor for that and we wouldn't get system overloads.


    (Slashdot, if I understand correctly, limits RSS because massive monitoring kills the network and servers. But if they only transmitted a single multicast on an event - such as a FP update - or every 30 minutes, the load would be negligable and yet everyone would get instantaneous updates.)


    In the end, RSS is a dead-end technology, because the network will always expand faster than any given pipe, which means point-to-point will inevitably fail in the end. It doesn't scale.


    RSS is good, yeah, but only as a stop-gap until ISPs can be pressured into enabling technologies they should never have disabled.

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    1. Re:Seriously... by danheskett · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The technology you describe is basically Really Unsimple Syndication, where as RSS is really simple.

      RSS is great because it's simple. It sucks under load, but the uses are myraid.

  6. Or it could just be the dot com craze revisited by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ever think that?

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  7. RSS causes media sameness by kurtu5 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ever notice that each site with NEWs has the same news? One would think that the internet would kill the monolithic ap feeds and provide more diverse coverage of world events. It seems that most news sites get their content from RSS feeds and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get their content and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get their content and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get their content and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get their content and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get their content and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get.... *sigh*