Dave Winer: how RSS can break through

Even the idea that “RSS” will be known to the general public baffles me. I don’t think you will “ever” be able to get a real hands up on who knows what RSS is or who uses it. It’s not a product ! This is like asking anyone that uses a computer their definition of TPC/IP. It’s just never going to happen.

A mainstream user cares only about the results, not the underlying format of those results. As much as we would like otherwise RSS is a format. It’s not viewed as xml in all it’s glory. I would think the question will be, do you know what news’s feed’s are. Of course this is talking about a general none technical consumer.

Sure a web site admin/creator or a hard core blogger will know, but that’s as far as it will ever get until allot more time passes, or more implementations take shape.

What are we doing useful with RSS besides syndication of news ?

I don’t see an application/standard that takes all hardware/vendor driver/software update feeds and updates your computer when updates are available. Why aren’t these people using it for deployment or patches/upgrades etc.. Fit’s quite nicely. The future of RSS is large we all see that. However it need’s different implementations and uses. Ton’s of stuff can be done with it, not just blog/comments/news stuff. Until we see these different implementations come out, I can’t see that happening.

We tend to hide the implementation details to give a consumer what they want. Information.

My my what a treat. Ringside seat, watching techies try and market and actually launch something mainstream, all infighting fiddling while Rome burns. Pssst, the Emperor hath no clothes.

Wow, a lot of talk about stats, if you were to google RSS you get about 1,200,000,000 results. This number is in itself significant. To understand what 80% of anything is you would have to count a cross section of everybody that would be capable of using RSS, this would require at least access to a computer with internet connection and an ability to read and write. In the long run, blogging will be theworld uniting force that is avaiable to more people than television.

Man, I wish I could do this with CoComment

RSS was around before podcasting, but people are talking more about podcasting than RSS. The main stream media have picked up on podcasting as they see value in it. (most) people still don’t get the value of RSS. And until people get (or more likely are shown) the value of RSS, it’ll never get beyond a technology used by informed 20%.

RSS as a concept (er, “web feeds”) busted through to the mainstream many many years ago with PointCast, when grandmas and secretaries “got it” and knew how to use it. RSS as a technology, albeit it very simple, is downright pathetic. Where is threaded comment support? Where is trackback chaining? RSS has the opportunity to make the Semantic Web digestable for every day users like grandma, but it just too bad that elitist geeks and greedy corporations try to keep it on top of some pedastal. RSS ain’t going nowhere until it combines the best of e-mail, forums, newsgroups, and blogs!

Dave’s right. The question is “80 percent of who?”

And, the followup question is “Who is Who?”

Is “Who” everybody? Every web user? Every blogger?

Depends, doesn’t it, on your own objectives?

Anyone who shows up at the same conference — or reads the same blogs — as Winer or Scoble has already sliced themselves off from the rest of humanity.

Remember these two things:

1. People who aren’t interested in technology don’t pay atention to technology.

2. People who aren’t interested in technology use technology when it makes it easier to do something they want to do. They still don’t care about technology.

I’m with Fred on this, but I’ll change his comment slightly. When 80% of the hands go up at a supermarket in Peoria, Illinois, then RSS will have broken through.

A couple of weeks ago I released a free blogging client called Bleezer (www.bleezer.com). Last week the local newspaper interviewed me and did a third of a page story on how I was making blogging easier.

The most frequent question I’ve gotten since then?

“So what is a blog exactly?”

RSS is the furthest thing from those people’s minds. Oh, did I mention I live in Waterloo, Canada, home of the RIM BlackBerry. So it isn’t as if these people don’t know technology.

By the way, if you think that RSS feeds are hard to subscribe to you haven’t used NetNewsWire on the Mac. If I click on a feed in Firefox, NetNewsWire pops up asking me if I want to subscribe.

I have to agree that RSS is not something that’s widespread. At least not as much as the RSS crowd would like. I’m a software developer, and even in this crowd RSS is not something that’s widely used. Some people have heard of it, quite a few not, and only very few use it. And this is between software developers. At least that’s been my experience by what I’ve seen in a couple of companies.

Most people still go to the web browser, visit a known site, or get to a location via Google (or some other friendly global search company). Whereas for myself my starting point for all my browsing is my RSS aggregator.

Maybe when you’re hanging out with the crowd “in the RSS know”, as Robert seems to be, then you’d get 80% of people raising their hands. But for others, like mom and pop, and regular Joe Blogs (pun intended) out there, they have no idea about RSS.

An easy and unbiquitous 1-2 click process resident in the browser would do wonders for making RSS more accessible.

Most newreaders aren’t that good. Most people don’t know what the orange XML is or any of the other icons or “subscribe” (email?).

Lately I’ve had good luck with Bloglines + the litle bookmarklet they offer to save feeds.

Now when I am on a blog I like, I just click the bookmark in the horizontal link bar at the top of my browser and it subscribes me. I don’t even go looking for icons or subscribe links.

A standard, quick 1-2 step process like this would entice more RSS subscriptions and participation.

I was at LIFT06. I can assure you folks that it was far from being a bloggers conference, just check how many of the 350 folks there have created a blog entry! It was mainly, in my opinion, post-graduates and other folks in there late twenties from a diverse range of universities. So I was surprised at the numbers who put there hands up when Robert asked the question. CoComment seems really cool!

[at lift as well] and yes geoff, there was also a significant portion maybe didn’t want to admit that had no idea about RSS until earlier that day? i mean you don’t want look dumb at a geek(ish) conference.

That said, scoble in his speech made a passionate case as to why we’re all crazy not to be using it more exhaustively in our lives. I believe that will come. but there is a huuuge gap between the alpha geeks and the rest of world on this one. first thing first, we need to lose the acronym “RSS”. acronyms and screenfull of xml are pretty good way to terrify joe/jane average user. RSS will take off once everyone can use RSS without even *realizing* that they are using it.