When Will RSS Go Mainstream?
I’ve just read an impassioned blog posting from Matt Ambrose about what RSS needs to do to reach the ‘tipping point’. In it Matt brings up some valid points. I posted my comments on his blog so I will not go into them here. One of the points that he brought up is the lack of awareness by the general public about RSS. I will admit that I couldn’t see the advantages of RSS until I actually started using it earlier on this year; today it has become an indispensable tool in my everyday life.
I have been ‘aware’ of RSS since 2004 so why did I wait until this year to look into it. Well first of all the acronym put me off! Three letter acronyms are rife in the Information Technology business. Talk to any techie and immediately he’ll start spouting off his little acronyms (HTML, XML, CRM, ERM, ERP, BI….. zzzzzz …. zzzz….) See what I mean? Just the use of the acronym implied complexity (and I am a tech guy). Consider the MP3 acronym. How many people do you know walk around and say, “Hey, checkout my new MP3 player!”? Very few, but you will hear them saying, “Hey, checkout this brand new iPod!” A further enforcement of this principle is the term “Podcasting”
The tipping point for RSS will come when one newsreader becomes prevalent and so popular that RSS will become synonymous with that newsreader application. Like Kleenex is to tissue paper, Hoover is to vacuum cleaner and more recently Google is to Internet search.
I can’t wait until that day, so what can we do to move it forward?
Technorati Tags: RSS Promotion