Comments on: Poll: Is RSS Mainstream?

By: Dallas Peters

Dallas Peters — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 03:40:53 +0000

Mac Mail. Werd up. Though with the new NewsGator iPhone app I’m thinking of moving it over to NetNewsWire.

By: me

me — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:14:28 +0000

Lots of people use RSS without even knowing it. My.Yahoo for example has tons of modules driven off of RSS feeds, but my tech-illiterate mother-in-law just knows she can go there to read all things she is interested in.

By: glenngould

glenngould — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:03:41 +0000

Reading through "Magpie Twitter Ad Network" I wonder is Twitter mainstream by the way? A lot more than RSS I guess but what do you think?

By: PatrickSamphire

PatrickSamphire — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:23:05 +0000

My experience is that almost no one knows what RSS is and have no interest in using it. I include RSS feeds for those who might want them, because they’re fairly easy to implement, but I don’t think they’ll ever be mainstream until people don’t even know they’re using them. Right now, they’re way too ‘techy’.

I can’t say I subscribe to many feeds myself. Mainly for sites I’m occasionally interested in rather than my ‘main’ sites, like sitepoint.

By: denitu

denitu — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:59:09 +0000

RSS is not even remotely mainstream. The main obstacle is that it’s too difficult to subscribe to a feed – even if you are already sold on RSS’s benefits and want to give it a try.

Meromo is right on the issue:

Is it ready for mainstream? Let’s see, what happens when I click on the RSS icon I see on this web page?

It may well be possible to use feeds in IE7’s sidebar but there are just too many potential stumbling blocks when attempting to subscribe by clicking on an RSS icon, depending on the browser. For example, you may get redirected to a Feedburner subscribe page, there could be old RSS software installed on the computer and, worst of all, you might just get the page of XML.

Increasing adoption inside Outlook would give RSS the best chance of going mainstream. This would circumvent the issues of ‘locked down’ IT policies and old browser versions that can hold back adoption in large organisations and the public sector.

By: VonSlash

VonSlash — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:02:53 +0000

I myself have never used RSS. Though hearing about it a couple times, I’ve never come across anything that required it’s use or even showed you how to use it. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn about, just haven’t found a purpose yet!

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:30:59 +0000

my husband who is quite the techy in many ways “doesn’t do” rss. However, he does read his iGoogle page which has numerous news headline plug-ins that he chose. I tell him that’s RSS and he shrugs. He just doesn’t want to bother with a separate reader, I guess.

By: basti

basti — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:13:46 +0000

I think RSS is a good way for “PowerUser” to stay up-to-date… but it isn’t mainstream because too many people doesn’t know what RSS is…
I use RSS with my Opera and can’t live without it…

By: Yewtree

Yewtree — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:54:05 +0000

Now that Blogger are (presumably) using it for their “follow this blog” service and other widgets, more people are using it, even though they don’t realise it.

By: BerislavLopac

BerislavLopac — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:17:41 +0000

The problem with the mainstream adoption of RSS is that most people have no idea what it is, or to be precise that it even exists. Even the most user-friendly sites have links like “subscribe to RSS feed” or something like that; I remember some initiative that it gets to be called something like “automatic updates”, but never came out of it.

General public needs to become aware of the feature, but won’t as long as it’s called “RSS syndication” which sounds like some kind of a high-tech mafia. Browsers need to cater to their less tech-savvy users by providing easy to understand feature like “Get updates to this page automatically” or something similar.