Robert Scoble has been arguing that RSS has hit the mainstream after attending LIFT conference and asking how many people use RSS there. I have to say he lives in a slightly skewed version of the world. Unlike the rest of us he lives towards the leading edge of technologies.
Although I don't agree with everything that Dave Winer says about what needs to happen with RSS to make it mainstream, I do think he has a bit more of an idea of how it will need to be implemented to be used by the mainstream world. (i.e. the world that aren't techies and technomarketers/ new media peeps)
I would say that in order for the standard person to use RSS there needs to be a really simple way to hook into it that is just click to subscribe, and by that I don't mean right click and copy link, paste link into rss subscription tool. I mean click and it's added! The information that is RSS'd needs to be timely, accurate, reliable, relevant and yes readable! I have 81 rss feeds in my aggregator now. And I have to say I find it very quick to find the information that I am looking for that way, but I do think I have too many feeds in my aggregator.
What I would like to see are the useful sites like autotrader, property markets, shares, online shops etc taking this up to show the latest houses, cars, share prices and new products/ prices for things. Even better would be to be able to query cars within a certain criteria then rss to get anything that pops up within my search criteria. Now think about that in terms of say e-bay... how wicked would that be...
The day that we start using blogs and RSS feeds to communicate within and between companies is still quite a long way off, however i look forward to the day that I don't need to look at my e-mails to see who is doing what, where, when and how.
OMG!!! I sound like a new media junkie! :S I'm not honest! (I just see potential in some of these things.)
posted @ Sunday, February 05, 2006 1:45 PM