The anti-RSS hype

#46 “The news stand is still checked everyday, its just someone else doing it for you.”

Likewise the aggregator checks and delivers content to me. How’s that any different?

Whatever the difference (details), how does it matter to the end user? My brother (and almost everyone else) doesn’t give a …. how these things work. The end user is a passive recipient not actively searching and that’s what matters. It’s easier and saves time even if you’re only subscribed to a single feed.

I have trouble keeping up with news even with my RSS subscriptions, I’ve no idea what I would do without them.

Look, RSS is a format, not a device. No one REALLY cares about DVDs. They care about movies on the consumer side, or about making money on the hardware/software/hollywood side. So no one cares about RSS. That Scoble is addicted to an RSS reader is no surprise, but I think it has something to do with MS making fat clients.

Honestly, I hate fat clients. I’d rather have Yahoo Mail than Outlook, but my company sees thing differently – for now. Someday they won’t. And I’ll be glad. So I’m never using a fat reader. I think there’s something to be said for focusing on fewer lines of thought. I can’t imagine what use Scoble has for hundreds of potential voices crying for his attention, when he already has a website with hundreds of voices trying to talk to him. The RSS/blogs development is a fad format. It’s useful in rare circumstances, like Scoble’s and some journalists. Look at Channel9 – it exists. So RSS is not enough. Fat RSS Readers are not adequate, and aren’t a huge improvement over IE.

In other words, I think it’s keen that I can view headlines from CNN, ESPN, Autoblog, etc. without visiting their website. But they shouldn’t. And Consumers aren’t all that excited about it. If Engadget and Autoblog had a normal front page with headlines and small captions like ESPN, I wouldn’t really need that much of a feed. AND they’d make more money.

They real application will eventually be push video. An instance where a website would get in the way, where headlines are adequate, where marking what you’ve seen is vital. On the other hand, we already have this, and it’s called Tivo.

I guess RSS Readers are Tivo for weboholics.

It’s pretty obvious you’ve never even tried reading the ones I’m currently subscribed to

Wanta bet? I have nearly all (and more) in my 1,500 one, tho you thankfully purged Jason’s network (another redudant posting gig). And my defintion of redudant is quite differing than yours obviously. Thankfully it’s a free world and I get to choose, not having you as my gatekeeper. Heck, even you praise Gabe’s toolset to high heaven, when it just algo’s the main topics from the main personalities, with overlap-tracking as a FEATURE, and all from the same perspective and without much in the way of real reporting. That to me is redudant.

Read 743 websites in a browser? Yes, easy. Tons of PR/News Culling toolsets out there, you know. Get beyond your limited bloggeristic view. Cymfony Dashboard for one. Problem here it be not grassroots, rather limited to the professional market, as such be where demand lies. But thinking there is no solution, only shows your glaring ignorance of this market.

Generally speaking I like Slashdot to see what is happening in Geek town (no offense!), but to me it always appears as though the people there dislike anything that gets attention or that has the potential to become mainstream, heck, even popular. See the example of the iPod which was called “lame” on Slashdot. To me the crowd there appears like those guys that stop listening to bands they liked before but that now became popular or that have been played on the radio (“damn, they have become commercial, they lost their credibility!”). Nothing wrong with that, but please regard Slashdot’s discussion within the right context.

hmmm, wow there is a lot of interest in RSS on Scobe’s site. I was just at @Media London last week and lots of people were talking about it there too. That tells me there is lots of interest and perhaps lots of potential too.

I don’t want to be too confrontation but for me RSS is a means to an end. RSS will help move data more efficiently. It already does that for Winer, Scoble, Michael(techcrunch), etc. But these guys are techs so they are willing to utilise a service with rough edges the public doesn’t.

So as I see we have a great protocol with amazing potential but how it is being used today is probably nothing like what it will be in 5yrs when it is truely mainstream.

Scoble makes a good point in his post about the Mac and UNIX. Today RSS is UNIX efficient but not friendly, tomorrow though RSS could be the new Mac OSX.

Only time will tell but I have faith, we have only scratched the surface of RSS’s potential in my opinion.