February 2nd, 2006

RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites” Feature

by Scott Karp

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

  • '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.

  • 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.

  • Biff

    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?

    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.

  • 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!"

  • J.D.

    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.

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