January 21st, 2006

How to Fix RSS

by Scott Karp

  •  View Comments

RSS sucks. I’m with Paul Kedrosky. Let the technodweebospehere rain fire and brimstone. I could add to Paul’s rant, but instead here’s a Really Simple three-step Solution (of course, the real first step is admitting that you have a problem):

1. Call it “subscribing”

Everyone understands subscribing. You’ve got your email newsletter subscriptions, your premium cable channel subscriptions, your magazine subscriptions (call now and subscribe to 52 weeks of…remember that?)

No one knows what “syndication” means, unless you’re talking about I Love Lucy reruns. Syndication is a publisher-centric, geek-centric term. For most people, it’s Really Simple Huh? Most people don’t even know that syndicate can be used as a verb!

And “XML” — now there’s a user-friendly term. I’m sure the masses will be adopting it some time next week. (How many people were permanently turned off to RSS when they got a page of XML and didn’t have a clue what to do with it?)

As for “feed” — that’s what you give to the chickens.

As Seth Godin says on Squidoo, “For something as simple and important as RSS, it’s incredibly misunderstood.” Well, shucks, now how did that happen?

Can we please, please, PLEASE make it really, truly simple and give people an option they can understand:

“Subscribe with a reader.”

Once everyone knows what it means, a universal symbol rssicon can kick in and drive adoption — and then it won’t matter than only 4% of online consumers know what RSS (really an appalling statistic given that the term is on virtually every website).

(I’m also wondering with “Web Reader” would work better — other ideas would be most welcome.)

So the options for getting content from a site are simply: subscribe by email, or subscribe with a “reader.”

Everyone’s got email, so the next step is:

2. Encourage everyone to get a reader

RSS adoption needs to start with the reader. Yahoo users use RSS (without knowing it!) because they have a reader.

First get a reader. Then subscribe to some stuff.

Every site with an RSS feed should have a BIG link inviting people to “Get a reader,” because most people either don’t have one or don’t know that they have one. The “Get a reader” page should say things like, “Do you use My Yahoo? Then you already have a reader.”

What’s a reader for? To read stuff from this site along with stuff from other sites, all in one place.

(Google, king of simplicity, calls it a reader – we’ll worry about podcasts and video later — as for RSS in Vista, are we really going to wait around for Microsoft to make things easier? Who served that koolaid?)

So you’ve got a reader. What are you supposed to read?

3. Use the iTunes model — Search, browse, recommend, remix

Google Reader has the search part down. Yahoo at least takes a stab at browsing and recommending.

Better than “most popular” would an Amazon-esque “people who subscribed to this also subscribed to…”

These are all proven approaches, but I think the real killer app for RSS is the pre-packaged remix. I’ll quote Paul again:

“People are lazy. People are lazy. People are lazy.” And I’ll add: People are really lazy.

It’s a pain to have all these feeds and have to read this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this. Just give me ONE subscription with everything I want, from the right mix of sources.

Where can I go for the five best health-related subscriptions (feeds)? Or the five best on sports, or politics, or basket-weaving? Or how about the best mix of all of these?

Whoever gets really good at putting together content mixes will have overloaded, overburdened media consumers flocking to their door. (Squidoo LensMasters should be bundling content feeds on their topics!)

All right, enough solutions. Here’s the real problem — RSS feeds are still static media, just in a different package. The New Media revolution will come when content is completely atomized and fully tagged, so that it can be remixed into perfectly tailored packages to suit every taste, i.e. truly what I want (when I want it).

But remember — PEOPLE ARE LAZY. They don’t have the time to put these packages together themselves. The real competition in New Media will be among content remixers. We used to call these editors — the only difference is that remixers will have a nearly infinite diversity of content at their disposal.

(Having read this, if you feel the burning desire to argue that RSS is just fine the way it is and that people need to change, not the technology or the nomenclature, you’re more than welcome, but before you do, meditate on this — isn’t life hard enough already? Still not convinced? Try reading the definitive study on the problem with RSS. If you still want to argue, well then all I can say is K.I.S.S. my RSS.)

UPDATE: I tried putting some of this “theory” into practice on Publishing 2.0 — see the top of the sidebar. Would welcome any feedback.

UPDATE #2: Should have mentioned how much Feedburner (used for the main feed on this site and many others) has helped move the ball forward.

UPDATE #3: Change starts at home — kudos to Scott Francis for taking action rather than just making excuses. There’s a lot of work to do, but why not start with the low-hanging fruit?

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post  Post to Facebook Share on Facebook

 Subscribe to Publishing 2.0 |  Follow on Twitter

Topics: Digital Media | Google | New Media | Publishing 2.0 | RSS | Yahoo

  • I consider myself a pretty techie person and it took me awhile to get use to RSS Feeds.

    When I talk to my non-techie friends about it they get the deer in the head lights look on there face. But just like any new technology it's just going to take time before it goes main stream.

    With Internet Explorer 7 coming out that is suppose to support RSS Feeds I think this will be a big step in the right direction to informing people on what an RSS Feed is.

    I totally agree that people are lazy, and until the day someone puts together an easy to use system it will continue to be an under utilized feature.
  • Change starts at home — kudos to Scott Francis for taking action rather than just making excuses. There’s a lot of work to do, but why not start with the low-hanging fruit?
  • Thanks, Edward, I'm quite well aware that the comment feed is still raw XML. The main feed (if you tried it) goes through Feedburner. Once I figure out how to put the comment feed for individual posts through Feedburner or other stylesheet I will -- wasn't obvious how to do it in Feedburner, but would be great if someone could add to the conversation by explaining how.

    Thanks for your helpful comment anyway.
  • You had me going there, and I was about to subscribe to comments on this post with my reader. I clicked on the o))) icon and was presented with raw XML.

    bzzt, thanks for playing.

    You need a stylesheet for your RSS feeds (like Feedburner does) that gives you one-click to add to the reader of your choice.
  • Dr. Fran, if it's a such a non-issue, then why all the attention? I could rant about the hole in my sock, but I don't think anyone would care. Look at your blog name -- do you really think you're representative of the average person? We're deeply in Dave Winer's debt for the technology, but with all due respect, it's an open source technology, so the community will rename it whatever it darn well pleases to make it more useful.

    Stowe (/Message), how can you say that it's not a "real problem" that no one knows what RSS is? I agree (if you read to the end), that the static nature of RSS is the real problem. But why not go after the low-hanging fruit in the meantime -- like getting all our sites to be more user-friendly?
  • Great post Scott, as was Paul's original. These are all great ideas. I think if the universal feed icon you're using here and the verb "subscribe" become widely associated, then the notion of "this is something i probably have to pay for" will start to fade as people begin to recognize it as just a better/another way to get this same free stuff.
  • People are NOT lazy. I find exactly what I want. People will search out the music, the content, the RSS, whatever. The name is not the issue.
    I am a non geek and I figured this all out. Why are you making a discussion out of something that is a non-issue?
    I guess it drives eyes here. I'm here.
    Dave Winer worked hard on this baby, he named it, he can, because he's the father.
    Good reading however.
  • hullabaloo
    You should check the definition for "subscribe". Last time I checked it's FREE! and lets hope it stays that way!
  • I agree there should be an industry-standard way of linking to and explaining how to use RSS and Atom feeds, plus OPML feeds for that matter. That you link to Feedburner suggests that Feedburner has solved part of the problem already, by inserting instructions at the top of the associated CSS file. Now if the industry could band together to work out a reader-agnostic, simplified CSS header for all the various XML feed flavours (cross-language too), then we'd have something.
  • Ok Scott, fair points. I'm honestly not sure about "right user experience first, then adapt the technology". There's a huge amount of unexplored space around the technology, and potentially user experiences we haven't even dreamt of. The majority of development seems hopelessly unimaginative (RSS is quite different from email, yet how many aggregators look like Outlook Express - circa 1995...). But yep, ok, I certainly agree that for the tech we have got, the user experience leaves an awful lot to be desired.
  • Danny, good points about toptensources and the copyright issues with remixes. I also agree that "Get a reader" is still asking people to change, but at least it tries to make it easier.

    What really strikes me, though, is that I didn't say a word about there being a problem with the technology "under the bonnet," but every time I talk about technology, I get defensiveness from techies. I don't know enough to have an opinion on the current state of the underlying technology (RSS vs. Atom, etc.). I'm just trying to be a consumer advocate. The "call it what you like" attitude is precisely why RSS is such a world of confusion for most people.

    Let's figure out the right user experience first, then adapt the technology
  • I've got to agree here. I'm not exactly ignorant of modern web technology, but after using a few RSS readers, I uninstalled them all and have no desire to bother with it again.

    Why would I want another interface when I can go to Technorati or Memorandum, and get all the stories, articles, and posts I probably want to read, without going to the trouble of subscribing to them and then sorting through the posts? Plus, this way I'm not limited to only the information sources I already know about.

    Once structured blogging, tags, etc. is firmly entrenched, I agree there will be a new way of building remixes. Something a bit like Yahoo's homepages (or whatever web desktop you'd like), where you tell something out on the web what you want to see, and it goes out and finds it for you. All in the browser.

    People are lazy. As soon as they can go to Google, click a tab for Google Reader and click a button for "tech news" then you'll get the majority reading blogs instead of the edge.
  • "if you feel the burning desire to argue that RSS is just fine the way it is and that people need to change, not the technology or the nomenclature" -

    There are certainly technical issues with RSS (most of which are fixed in Atom). But what you're suggesting in the list above isn't about changing the technology -

    1. Call it “subscribing”
    Call it what you like, it'll still be the same stuff under the bonnet. (And what exactly do you call the thing you subscribe to?)

    2. Encourage everyone to get a reader
    I'd say that's "people need to change".

    3. Use the iTunes model — Search, browse, recommend, remix
    I don't know about iTunes, but that's pretty much the web model. RSS search is less than perfect, true. Browsing is pretty sub-optimal, recommendation is still pretty random (although I know of tools in the pipeline), remix is growing but issues like copyright can be problematic. But none of these things are actually related to technical issues with RSS (aside from those Atom solves ;-) They're about what you do with the stuff.

    People are lazy, sure. Things could be easier. But people are also willing to put effort in when they see the potential of personal benefit. As you suggest, one thing RSS offers is an improvement in personalization of information. But your "five best health-related subscriptions" may be completely different from mine. "It’s a pain to have all these feeds and have to read this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this." Any half-decent aggregator will allow a merged view. Prepackaged lists are already available from toptensources along with loads of other places.
  • Scott G, I agree, that is a problem with the word "subscribe." I guess "Subscribe with a Reader (for Free!)" is a little cheesy. Most email newsletters subscriptions are free, though, so maybe that will help. (I fixed the link to the study -- thanks.)

    If you follow the link above to Randy Holloway's response, you'll see he dismisses these suggestions because they "sanitize the concept of RSS and remove references to the people and their ideas that have made RSS what it is today." Said like a true techie. The average person doesn't know who invented web browsers or email, but they are very much in their debt -- that's what happens when a technology is adopted by the masses. And is Randy suggesting that RSS remain "unsanitized"? That kind of attitude is what stymies adoption.

    ALL - I tried putting some of this “theory” into practice on Publishing 2.0 — see the top of the sidebar. Would welcome any feedback.
  • Great post, Scott.

    One question I personally struggle with though is around the "SUBSCRIBE" word. It makes a lot of sense, but I pay for my cable subscription and my newspaper subscription. Consumers in many ways associate that with "not free" and when I talk to newspaper publishers, they won't go anywhere near that word on their sites (for the same reason). I still haven't come up with a better word though, it seems perfect, except for that one nasty problem.

    BTW, your link to the research study 404s. The correct link is: http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss/RSS_whitePaper1004.pdf
  • somaking
    Scott,

    Yet again you make poignant observations.

    Real innovation with RSS has barely just begun. Most people are too lazy or too ignorant to come up with good ideas about what RSS can do.

    Its up to creative-minded developers to drive this tool into tomorrow's technology. Expect MS, Apple, et al to screw it up. Risk-taking entrepeneurs will yet again pave the road.
  • You're absolutely right. The killer app for RSS is an RSS registry that allows people to find RSS feeds the same way iTunes lets them find RSS podcasts. Allow for user ratings and tags on that server, and put together an aggregating client for the desktop that pulls the metadata for feeds off that server.

    The other thing we don't want is clients that don't aggregate- but even in clients that do, we don't want to see a list. That list interface provides no way to tell what articles are the most interesting or the most important. Integrating, behind the scenes, with something like technorati to get the popularity of a single article, coupled with a rating/tagging system, and then presenting a news paper like display, where the top articles go on the "front page", and the most-linked get the central position- that's a killer app.

    I'm working on an RSS client to do just that, but now I see how important the server is for that. And really, it doesn't need to be a desktop client- it could be a web desktop (I just haven't worked with AJAX at all and don't have all the time in the world to learn something new).

    As a note: at the top, you follow your own rule and offer to allow users to "Subscribe". But for your comments, you point users to a comments RSS feed.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Subscribe

Receive a free daily email newsletter with new Publishing 2.0 posts


Recent Posts

Clicky Web Analytics