RSS for Mom and Dad

Just for the sake of retro-gnoming, I thought it might be fun to whip up a fresh batch of ‘RSS-batter’ for all of the RSS rabid gnomies out there. After giving it about 10 minutes worth of thought, I decided that I would examine the reason why some people are open to embracing RSS while others continue to rely on the old standbys such as email and browser access.

It’s all about what we know-

Do you parents use RSS to gather and browse through the latest news and Weblogs? I am willing to bet they, like many others, are still not that interested in making the change. Why is this? Are they somehow against the idea of this emerging trend? I don’t believe this is the case at all. In actuality, I believe it stems from the conditioning that so many of us have been subjected to in specific areas of our lives.

When you have an itch, you scratch it. When your parents or someone else who may not be immersed in technology want to get the latest news, they are likely to either tune-in to the TV/Radio or perhaps even go to their favorite news related Web site instead. The point is, this is within their comfort zone. This is what they know and it has worked for them thus far. What possible need do they have to change anything, right? They have been perfectly happy for all of this time and are not really that motivated to switch right now.

Give them a reason to change-

If you are wanting to give the ultimate holiday gift this year to those who are a little futher from being tech savvy as you’d like them to be, try this on for size. Bloglines, one of the easiest and coolest things to come to RSS and recipient-side content management in a long time. Set them up a Bloglines account then add their favorite content to it. If you look, you will find that most content sources have RSS feeds these days, so just go for it!

Now for the ultimate addition for those people who spend more time with their browsers open than anything else. Add the Bloglines notifier to your parents’ (or whomever you are working with) favorite Web browser. Bloglines is progressive enough that they have a notifier for both Firefox and Internet Explorer, so don’t let browser issues stop you. Now sit them down and show ‘em how it works. After a day or so, you might just find them adding RSS feeds to their own Bloglines account without your intervention. Hey, as wild as this may sound, people are open to change if you make it easy enough for them! You just need to be there to show them the way. ;o)