February 2nd, 2006
RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites” Feature
RSS is in Internet Explorer 7!!! The blogosphere is shouting from the rooftops. Yawn. I tried RSS in IE7, and it highlights the true shortcoming of current RSS applications — it’s really not much of an improvement over “favorites” or “bookmarks.”
IE7 goes so far as to put the RSS reader in same menu as favorites (or as TDavid puts it “A separate “Feed Center†exists inside the Favorites area.”), which appears in a left-hand navigation column.
So what’s the real innovation over Favorites/Bookmarks in terms of user experience? That it “automatically updates”? That I can get everything all in one place? That it highlights what’s new?
Here’s how IE7’s built-in RSS stylesheet explains the “benefits” of RSS:
When you subscribe to a feed, updated information is automatically downloaded to your browser. The benefit is that you get the latest content from your favorite websites without the trouble of checking websites manually.
So I click on each RSS feed “manually” instead of clicking on each Favorites link manually. That’s the benefit?
Is this going to change the average person’s media life? Hardly. Is it going to make it easier for the average person to suffer from “feed overload”? Probably.
Here’s something to ask yourself as you receive your steady stream of RSS feed update notifications along with your new email notifications and everything else competing for your attention:
Do I really need to be notified whenever one of the 1,000 blogs I subscribe to posts new content? Is it really that urgent that I need one more distraction in my life?
And if it really makes more sense to review your favorite sources once or twice a day, what’s wrong with a list of links to those sites?
Richard MacManus has a meta-review of the initial reaction to IE7, in which he cites early buzz that “IE7 will kill a lot of independent RSS Aggregator products, due to IE7’s impressive RSS integration features.”
Of course it will. IE7 features are hardly “impressive” but they are certainly integrated, which will be enough for many people to switch from independent aggregators, so they only have to use one application. If RSS aggregators are vulnerable to Microsoft, it’s because they are lacking in any true innovation.
The implementation of RSS has been a failure of imagination. I stand by what I’ve already said about the problem with RSS:
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).
UPDATE
On his WordPress blog, Dave Winer gives a peak at his NewsRiver RSS aggregator. It’s worlds away from this IE7 silliness — definitely worth checking out:
That’s why I’m getting ready to ship NewsRiver. To set the bar back where it belongs, where it was when RSS started. To try to get the ball rolling again, in some kind of productive way.
Try it out. Here’s my aggregator. The username/password is snarky/snarky.
And hat’s off the Paul Kedrosky, the original “RSS sucks” maven, for saying it much funnier than I could. (For the record, “RSS sucks” is code for “RSS applications suck”)
Topics: RSS
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Personally, I find Live Bookmarks in Firefox really useful. I like Live Bookmarks, as they give me a quick overview of new stories without having to actually visit the site and scan through. They’re there when I want them, and not bothering me when I don’t.
But I also agree that RSS isn’t always used in the best ways. On one hand, I don’t like the way aggregators accumulate posts like emails - then I feel obliged to read (or at least ‘mark as read’) every one.
On the other hand, the implementation in IE7 is rubbish. All they have done (as far as I could see) is create a ’special’ favourites folder for RSS feeds, and then apply a stylesheet to them. You might as well just bookmark the site. In fact, I think calling it an RSS ‘aggregator’ or ‘implementation’ is really stretching the imagination.
better than to ask my opinion on software. My wife won’t even stay in the room when software comes up.) So does this mean that we are doomed to a life of mediocre aggregators when IE7 wins? I am afraid so, but I hope not. What I really hope is that Scott Karp’s vision will be realized: “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 the aggregator
(Let’s put aside the fact that I found this news article using an aggregator, and that this site itself has an RSS feed.)
For me, RSS is all about speed and simplicity.
RSS lets me organize headlines the way I want; I don’t have to use anybody’s navigation structure or dig for content. Sites such as CNN.com have 2 tech stories listed on the front page, and a handful more on their tech page. I have to dig further to find other tech content that I want. Subscribing to a list of their recently-published tech stories is a far faster way to browse through the site’s new tech content. Along the same line, RSS reduces the amount of clutter I have to cut through. I don’t have to go to a news site and wade through their 20 stories and 80 links to find what I want.
RSS brings my headlines into one place. I can scan 50 tech stories from 5 sites using my RSS reader in, say, 5 minutes. Browsing those same 50 stories by visiting the web sites (i.e., your “favorites” idea) would take at least twice as long–probably more.
Do you ever use a portal site with your local weather on it? According to your comments, that would seem to be ludicrous; why not just visit your weather.com favorite? Do you aggregate your financial transactions in Microsoft Money? Why not just visit all 5 of your bank accounts? Speed and simplicity are the answers. That’s why people use RSS instead of just favorites. To equate the two is to miss the point of RSS.
[…] Scott Karp: “I tried RSS in IE7, and it highlights the true shortcoming of current RSS applications — it’s really not much of an improvement over ‘favorites; or ‘bookmarks.’” […]
BriaN, I didn’t say RSS wasn’t an improvement over favorites — you make a good point that RSS cuts through clutter for each source — it’s just not all that exciting an improvement. It still doesn’t solve the problem of 1,000 (or 1,000,000) sources.
And I don’t think your weather and financial analogies hold up.
The reason weather works so well on a portal is you don’t have to click to a new screen to see it. In IE7, each RSS feed is a new screen.
And RSS in IE7 is still like having to click on 5 separate tabs to see transactions by bank, rather than see them all on one spreadsheet. And I know that all of my bank transactions are relevant, while I don’t know that every item in each of my 100 feeds is relevant.
Until I can get a single feed that has only exactly what I want, RSS will be nothing more than a slight incremental improvement in an overwhelming world of media.
(I have an RSS feed on this site because it’s the best I can do at the moment — if I’m critical of RSS, it doesn’t mean all or nothing — it’s about striving for improvement, not refusing to work with what you have.)
Ah, now we agree on something, Scott. Your elaboration is good; while RSS is significantly more efficient than browsing multiple web sites (a point which I don’t think you adequately conceded in your article, but seemed to agree with in your comment), I still do have to wade through a number of headlines in which I have no interest.
RSS allows us to browse much more focused, targeted content than a simple list of favorites does. (It’s such a different process of data-gathering that I was surprised to see it compared to favorites.) But we need a step beyond RSS to cut even more of the clutter. I share your interest in seeing the technology move forward.
Keeping feeds bookmarked is not a great idea, hosted is the only way to go. That’s why I use bloglines - I like to be able to have my feeds available on more than one computer. IE’s handling of RSS also makes the mistake of stripping styles from feeds, making things like FeedBurner less useful. IMHO if MS wants in on this space it should be integrated into MSN’s live favorites so that it’s portable.
J.D., great point about hosting. That’s what I dislike about FeedDemon — it’s a powerful application, but I hate having to turn it on.
And then it dings at me, like Outlook — that space at the bottom right of my screen is hyperactive enough from email. “What I want, when I want it” does not mean notifying me every time there’s “something NEW.” It’s as if I should say “WOW! A new blog post — let me drop everything and go see!”
whips drive milk-wagon horses so well that people will soon stop using willow branches for the purpose. Why? Because, as Scott Karp points out, the IE7 RSS implementation is as glorified “favorites” — bookmarks, in other words. And they are particularly irritating bookmarks, ones that
Umm, maybe you shouldn’t be subscribed to 1,000 blogs. 99.9% of blogs are shit. Only subscribe to blogs that actually say something. At least IE will get the average idiots on board with RSS to some degree.
Scott,
Like you, I question the use of RSS by the “average” person.
Now that I’m more involved in blogging (and as part of a job), RSS is better for me than my old “Favorites” bookmark system. “Favorites” kept me chained to my personal computer (sadly, not a laptop). With an RSS reader (I use Bloglines) if I happen to be travelling, I can keep up with what I need to do–although I’m still hunting out cybercafes because, well, no laptop.
Yet, my involvement in blogging is different from the involvement of most average people. There is indeed a kind of conceit that insists everyone out there will want to read blogs. That’s not necessarily true. Even if they start blogging themselves, they might not read a great number of blogs–maybe only a few favorites. Letting people know RSS readers are there is great–insisting that *everyone* must use them, however, is a tad dogmatic…
Living where I do, I’m around “average” people all the time–there’s no Silicon out here in the Pioneer Valley, that’s for sure–I see, and understand, how technology is NOT touching their lives. It’s great that the high-speed, techy tools are out there, but insisting that they are the only way to go kind of denies the fact that not everyone’s going at the same speed, or that everyone is ready to go at that speed. Heck, out here, they’re still debating the importance of Forums and Newsgroups–blogs and RSS readers are almost a foreign concept.
T.
he reiterated those views in light of Microsoft’s preview release of IE7 with RSS aggregation features, which Scott Karp called a ” glorified ‘favourites’ feature “. The River of News model is one that makes absolute sense while we’re stuck in a subscription mindset. If our software
the resources and checklists below. You may want to … Zonk / Slashdot: IT: IE7 Bug Reports Flooding In Scott Karp / Publishing 2.0: RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites†Feature Codestore Activity Log: Playing With IE 7 | Blog Modculture / Tech Digest: Microsoft previews IE7 beta 2
[…] Scott Karp is tackling two different extremes. On one hand there is ignorance about ubiquitous RSS feeds among most of Internet users, and then there is issue of information overflow with too many feeds for some. Fixing one of them may even worsen the other pain. […]
Scott Karp are not encouraging: The main reason I am so irritated by IE 7’s lackluster user experience around RSS is that you only get one chance to make a first impression. Using IE 7 will be the first time millions of people will be introduced
have to use one application. If RSS aggregators are vulnerable to Microsoft, it’s because they are lacking in any true innovation. I think that much of the debate about the merits of IE7’s RSS features miss an important point, that it’s not targeted at you and me. An issue I faced
[…] Apple seems to have embraced the idea that RSS is a glorified bookmarking system to great effect. At a glance the user can tell if there’s anything new at their favorite site and visit it without having to leave the comfortable interaction of their browser. […]
which will be enough for many people to switch from independent aggregators, so they only have to use one application. If RSS aggregators are vulnerable to Microsoft, it’s because they are lacking in any true innovation. I think that much of the debate about the merits of IE7’s RSS features miss an important point, that it’s not targeted at you and me. An issue I faced immediately when I started developing SAP’s social media strategy is that an RSS client is not part of our standard desktop
Media Is Newly Important, Even Though It’s Definitely Not “New” Suing the Corporate Handmaidens to Illegal Domestic Spying RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites†Feature Support Philly Future Playing the Walmart card MediaShift: Dan Gillmor finds his Center De Nieuwe Reporter podcasts Congress,
that IE7’s version of the RSS reader is that great  in fact, it is pretty much “just like favourites,†as Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 puts it  it’s that it’s probably just good enough for most people. Dave Winer might be right when he says that the “river of news†is
virulentes
Scott Karp
[…] Scott Karp has suggested that IE7’s RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites†Feature and I couldn’t agree more. After an initial evaluation of the IE7 beta, my overal impression is that the RSS support is no better than that of Safari, Opera or Firefox. This type of support is probably fine for those who subscribe to a very limited number of feeds. If you subscribe to more than 10 feeds you’re still better off using a true RSS aggregator like NewsGator, RSSOwl, Google Reader, NetNewsWire, etc. […]
‘For the record, “RSS sucks†is code for “RSS applications suck‒
Yeah, I think this is the issue you’re seeing. Syndication tech rocks, but aggregation tech has a ways to go. News tickers and instant notifications are not very dense or helpful for managing attention if you’ve got over a handful or two feeds. FeedDemon / NetNewsWire email inbox style aggregators are better for scanning lots of feeds, and NewsRiver style aggregators are even better for just letting the feeds stream by. The next stage should involve filtering and intelligence so that you don’t have to use *your* intelligence to sift out the crap.
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and disappointing. It seems I’m not the only one who dislikes what the Internet Explorer team has done with RSS. In his post RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites” Feature Scott Karp writes RSS is in Internet Explorer 7!!! The blogosphere is shouting from the rooftops. Yawn. I tried RSS in IE7,
[…] Scott Karp: “I tried RSS in IE7, and it highlights the true shortcoming of current RSS applications  it’s really not much of an improvement over ‘favorites’ or ‘bookmarks.’” […]
and disappointing. It seems I’m not the only one who dislikes what the Internet Explorer team has done with RSS. In his post RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites” Feature Scott Karp writes RSS is in Internet Explorer 7!!! The blogosphere is shouting from the rooftops. Yawn. I tried RSS in IE7,
If you install it, it installs over IE6, as opposed to installing as a seperate application. It renders CSS pretty good, except when it doesn’t - that’s when it renders it REALLY BAD. RSS? I’mstealing the phrase “glorified favourites feature†and leaving it at that. The tabs are so old news they actually create a black hole in the features list that has sucked in other new features, and you don
opposed to installing as a seperate application. It renders CSS pretty good, except when it doesn’t - that’s when it renders it REALLY BAD. RSS? I’m stealing the phrase “glorified favourites feature” and leaving it at that. The tabs are so old news they actually create a black hole in the
[…] From microsoft’s website. Last weeks release of the IE7 beta 2 was the first chance for many to download and explore things like RSS in Internet Explorer, apparently not much of an improvement over “favorites” or “bookmarks.”. Microsoft’ has video with the team up on Channel 9 (and that links to all the important stuff). There’s an FAQ at the official MS IEBlog. This site is usefull for information on CSS changes, security and so on. […]
[…] From microsoft’s website. Last weeks release of the IE7 beta 2 was the first chance for many to download and explore things like RSS in Internet Explorer, apparently not much of an improvement over “favorites” or “bookmarks.”. Microsoft’ has video with the team up on Channel 9 (and that links to all the important stuff). There’s an FAQ at the official MS IEBlog. This site is usefull for information on CSS changes, security and so on. […]
not much of an improvement over “favorites†or “bookmarks.â€. Microsoft’ has video with the team up on Channel 9 (and that links to all the important stuff). There’s an FAQ at the official MS IEBlog. This site is usefull for information on CSS changes, security
I’ve been reading quite a lot of stuff over the past few days about how folks are disappointed that RSS isn’t making the jump into the mainstream. Scott Karp had some good thoughts on this
[…] That’s why — much as I hate to suggest it — Internet Exploder 7.0 might be one of the best ways for RSS newbies to get involved in it. It finds feeds and makes it easy to add them, and then you can see them in a sidebar and read them that way. Scott and some others said when IE7 first came out that the RSS implementation is lame because it isn’t that different from old-fashioned bookmarks, but in a way that’what part that makes it easier for people to get their arms around it, conceptually speaking. Before all you Firefox fans flame me, I know the Fox can do the same thing, but the reality is that most people still use IE and will for the foreseeable future. […]