Online Media Cultist

Web producer, writer, online media cultist. That's how I roll.

RSS: What’s the Deal in 2010?

I've long been a big fan of RSS, and Google Reader continues to dominate a good chunk of my web working day. But though RSS plays a larger role on the web than most people realize, it has not quite reached the potential that many saw for it and has certainly eluded household name status.

Part of the reason for this has to do with the relatively non-intuitive way that RSS feeds are added to RSS readers for end users. And part of it is due to the rise of social media applications for information sharing (read: Twitter, Facebook) and the real time web.

So where does that leave things heading into 2010? The consensus of the blogosphere is, well, a muddled one.

ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus reported late last month that the RSS Reader market is in disarray but then dialed back and returned with 5 Reasons Why RSS Readers Still Rock. Venture Chronicles bluntly states that "RSS as a standard has failed to evolve in ways that solve publisher problems." And Louis Gray (rightly) points out that "the current discussion around RSS being less useful, or less important, than in years past, is flawed, period."

With the web, one thing that we know is that things are forever changing, and usually more quickly as opposed to less. So it is with RSS as well, and one thing we know for sure is that the use of RSS will evolve based on patterns affecting the social web, the real time web, and so on.

Allen Stern's smart takeaway is that the era of full RSS feeds may be ending because online publishers can now effectively promote themselves without "giving away" full content via RSS. Personally, as a heavy Google Reader user, this would not bother me all that much as I often click through to the stories that I take the time to read end-to-end.

Meanwhile, I still see huge potential and opportunity of Google Reader as a content sharing and social media tool. At its best, the shared and shared + note features offer the an ideal combination of "smart social network" and "smart content aggregator." And no doubt Mother Google will have more in store for us this year.

Finally, it just occurred to me: if Google had acquired FriendFeed rather than Facebook, would the RSS landscape look significantly different today?

(this post originally appeared on Technorati)

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Date
January 6th, 2010

Author
Eric Berlin

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OMC

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  • I absolutely could not function without RSS. I write 4-6 posts a day for a variety of blogs.

    I can't sort through Twitter looking for good leads/story ideas. It is beyond me how people say that Twitter is a better way to promote a blog post. 9 out of 10 tweets are far less than 140 characters... usually something like "Read what I had to say about Haiti here (bit.ly URL)" Tweets are boring.

    I dislike truncated RSS feeds, but will have to get used to them because as you note, they are becoming more popular.

    (BTW: don't look up GoingLikeSixty and give me crap because I only have 100 followers. I write and tweet under another name.)
  • As a publisher I offer rss only as a service to my older readers. Most of my readers follow me on twitter. I foresee this to be the case more and more in the future.
  • Twitter spammer!
  • I fear the potential and opportunity for Google Reader being frittered away by Google, as it still remains a non-monetizing tool for Google, and enhancements are said to be difficult with a large userbase.

    While it is strong at content sharing, it is poor at people discovery. That's also one reason parallel feed-based social networks like Toluu and PostRank have sprung up.

    Even if Google had acquired FriendFeed, I don't think much would have changed. No ads > no money > no development.
  • I actually love that G Reader is content consumption/sharing "first," with people added in as an organic part of the RSS reader experience. I'm not forced to manage friend requests and friend lists in anything like the same way as Twitter or Facebook.

    You bring up an interesting point about advertising, but I'd be amazed if Google Reader's social features, as part of Google's overall social networking/media strategy, were not an important part of their plans going forward. Gmail, iGoogle, Google Reader, Google Friend Connect, etc. have tremendous potential synergy together and already have huge member numbers, obviously, in their own respective rights.
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