RSS Can Kiss My…
by Patricia Mayo
I was chatting with my buddy Rob Williams of 170spoons when he said “gotta run, time to catch up on some dinner and RSS.” I mentioned I haven’t bothered with RSS for months. His response was, quite understandably - “WHAT?!”
Photo mashup of images by Daniel Bonoore and Beau de Noir
You’re probably going to call me nuts, but RSS, to me, is quite inefficient. There are far better tools which serve the same perceived purpose. I know, I know - I’ve just thrown you through a complete loop, but allow me to explain…
The Problem With RSS
Photo by Josh Klute
Some call RSS the on-demand newspaper. However, it’s really a lot more like the High School newspaper. Unfocused, unedited, and pretty much pointless.
With RSS, you don’t get “what’s good,” you just get everything. It’s like taking home every book from the public library.
And just like taking home every book from the library, you have a deadline. If you don’t read all those feeds within a couple days, there will just be more, and more, and more - until all too soon, you’re buried.
Psychologically, RSS is a burden. It weighs on us. And RSS doesn’t even solve the problems we want it to solve.
Purpose, Form, and Function
Photo by Sanja Gjenero
Most people use RSS readers for two primary purposes - reading / learning, and blogging inspiration.
To me, RSS is sorely inefficient in solving those “problems.”
I approach most things in life with a question, first and foremost. “What did they do before this technology to solve the same problem?”
Well, for reading and learning, we had newspapers - the real print kind, edited by a professional and separated by topic to ensure relevance, clarity, and importance.
Today, there are far better similar technologies.
The best tool for reading and learning is what I call “human hand-picking.” Twitter, Digg, Sphinn, and other social medias are where you get these goods.
For blogging inspiration, there really wasn’t a prior solution except good old fashioned research and original ideas.
For these purposes, the best solution is what I call “relevance dated.” In other words, it’s the freshest possible stuff available on your specific topic.
There’s a tool you can use as you blog to get the freshest targeted information possible - it’s a Firefox plugin called Zemanta. It grabs clues about the context of your post every 300 characters, and works with Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, and LiveJournal.
The pictures are rarely on target, but the related posts and suggested links are always right in the nick of time. It will be compatible with Firefox 3 candidate 1 on Tuesday, May 20.
Then you have sites like Tiinker, which learn your preferences and pick stories based upon your voting patterns. You get blogs, news - everything. You pick your newspaper.
Last but not least, there’s Alltop.com with the most recent posts from only the very best sources, all separated by topic.
RSS Does Have a Place
I do use RSS from time to time - on my Blackberry with Viigo Reader, when I’m bored out of my mind or have nothing better to do. It’s set to delete anything but the 5 most recent posts. If I miss something, I could care less.
Seriously.
Last 5 Posts in Blogging
- Directing Those Thousand Words Pictures Speak #1 - May 18th, 2008
- Ambiguity Aversion - Are You Afraid to Read This? - May 16th, 2008
- Foolproof Self-Improvement, and a Challenge - May 6th, 2008
- "Problogging" Reality Check - May 4th, 2008
- Picking That Perfect Wordpress Theme - May 3rd, 2008
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you never miss the next great communication tip. Thanks for stopping by, I hope to see you often!
Trisha, @mayobrains on Twitter
May 20th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I completely agree with the fact RSS can lead to information overload if you’re following a lot of sites/frequently updated sites.
However, I think there are various solutions that can make it far more useful. Readers like Google Reader and Feedeachother allow friends to share and recommend feeds/posts which is a valuable filter, and ensures the most relevant things to me are highlighted.
I also think the originators of RSS feeds needs to think about the reasons for their creation, and look at making them more targeted, and also delivering them in a variety of ways for difference levels of user. For instance, allowing users to create their own custom RSS feed of site content via a search function, and then being able to consume it via a reader, via a widget, via a ticker etc.
Zemanta and Tiinker look interesting, and I’ll definitely be checking it out - but I’m loathe to limit myself to Alltop. Too many of the blog feeds I really value aren’t big enough to be included on the A list digest.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:14 am
True - readers with sharing options is an alternative. I did overlook this, but for good reason… most of my friends have no clue what would interest me hehe. That’s a great suggestion though - definitely a “must consider” for people who are a bit more talkative about themselves than me.
However, your suggestion about the feed origination is absolute genius and key. Definitely not a hit or miss there - and I’ll steal that idea if it’s cool with you
Thanks so much for your input! (and to be honest, I don’t really use Alltop either… I agree, too limiting)
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:48 am
Okay, I finally showed up to comment. I see where you’re coming from. You seem to be taking the approach of allowing the wisdom of the crowds filter out the stories you should know about (digg, etc). I see value in your approach but for me it’s a time factor. If I’m following the “right” sources in RSS, I’m finding these stories before they filter to the top. It may be a personality thing. I like to monitor closer to the source.
The other place RSS is so very useful is if I’m wanting to monitor content from friends (that won’t make the digg) or to follow new-to-me blogs to see if there is valuable content for me to engage with.
Using Google Reader I can control what I see when I want to see it. I can skim read 200 feeds in minutes. It’s also valuable because I can mark it to be read later (like your post here).
Bottom line is there are tools for everyone to get done what they need to get done. But it makes me sad you’re not subscribed to my stuff!
This is a good post. Thanks for stirring it up.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:46 am
I get things before they filter to the top, in fact - I get things before they hit RSS! That’s Twitter for ya. And with Zemanta and Tiinker, I still get stories before they filter to the top.
And if I want to see what a friend is up to, I enter their URL in my address bar, and they have my full attention. Reading from RSS tends to make for artificially inflated bounce rates.
…and I am subscribed to your stuff. Did we mention once in our Skype conversation that you’re 170spoons? I remembered that on my own because I do read your blog.