I read a post on Mashable on May 2nd that questioned if RSS is dead. I assume you know what RSS is, but if not, read here before continuing on.
People often confuse the purpose of the various tools that are available, ranging from RSS to web browsers to Facebook to Twitter to E-mail and on and on. RSS is far from dead and should have a long life-time ahead of it, here are two key reasons why:
- RSS is a passive search. Much like a lazy afternoon fishing by a stream, you simply tell your RSS reader to update you when new content becomes available from your favorite web sites. I regularly monitor approximately 50 RSS feeds on a variety of topics that I use to ensure I stay up to date on the world around me. There is no other, easy to use, method available to stay on top of this amount of information daily.
- You would be correct if you wanted to argue that Twitter is in part a passive search. However, with the volume of information that passes my way daily on Twitter I find more power from Twitter via active social searches than any passive searching that I do.
- RSS is built upon XML and is therefore very extensible. The ability to link to audio and video was a logical addition to RSS and has only made the technology more powerful.
- It is trivial for developers to generate search results for their sites, or across sites, using RSS. Again, it is based upon XML which is an easy format to create for developers of all levels.
The majority of those people taking the survey agreed, with 72% of the respondents stating that they use RSS all the time.
What do you think? Will RSS be here in another 5 years?
John
May 6, 2009 at 2:03 am
Good question. I am pretty amazed at how many people still don’t even know about RSS. I think it is just getting started and will surely be around in 5 years. It’s on us industry gurus to educate our clients and friends!
May 5, 2009 at 11:35 pm
on point
May 5, 2009 at 1:53 pm
John,
I completely agree. Of course RSS isn’t dead and will be here in 5 years. But if you, like me, are overloaded trying to keep up with the passive search, then you might want to check out Bscopes. We built it to supplment feed readers with a visual approach.
I just wrote a new blog post referring to the Mashable post: Don’t Kill your RSS Reader! Add to it
Brad
May 5, 2009 at 1:51 pm
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