Uttercast: RSS; Who’ll tell us what to read?

February 24, 2009 – 8:40 am


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After reading Ike Pigott’s article on Media Bullseye, "It’s Nothing Personal," (http://mediabullseye.com/…onal.html), in which he mock-apologized for not following the too-many blogs in his feed reader, I asked myself- will RSS fail as a consumer application? It may.

- RSS is too complicated to explain, even if it’s "really simple." Is it too much to ask most people to press that orange button and set up their own feeds in a reader? Yes. It is. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be struggling still to explain it.

- Are there too many feeds to possibly follow? Yes, no matter what topic you favor.

- Do people still need "sheriffs" to round up content and tell them what’s best to read? Yes. Twitter and Friendfeed do that for people Iike Ike and me. News aggregators have the opportunity to turn RSS into something the masses will actually use, by organizing the news and showing people the best stuff to read.

Sound almost like a job for journalists and editors. What do you think?

Mobile post sent by DougH using Utterlireply-count Replies.  mp3

UPDATE:- nice response from Ike, as linked in the comments:

Blog readers: I am riding the Pan-Mass Challenge this summer, a 2-day bicycle trek across Massachusetts to raise money for the Jimmy Fund in support of cancer research. Will you join the generous folks who have sponsored my ride? Click any part of this message to go to my fundraising page– and thank you!

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  1. One Response to “Uttercast: RSS; Who’ll tell us what to read?”

  2. Well put.

    http://www.utterli.com/u/utt/u-ODE4OTI2OQ#utt-ODE4OTI2OQ

    By Ike on Feb 24, 2009

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