Based on Aaron’s article below, I find myself agreeing with a fair amount of what he is saying. Still, let’s not forget about iTunes/podcasting and MyYahoo…

We’re not normal. I mean, come on, let’s face it. Most people still don’t understand RSS,feeds and the concept of web syndication. Some people think RSS is the email killer. Others don’t. Chances are, if you read this blog, you’ve got a feed-reader chock full of subscriptions. If you’re like me, you even subscribe to searches on your own name.

But there’s still a real barrier for normal everyday people to fully grok RSS and its benefits. Devin Reams mourns this barrier:

So why don’t we have a .rss file extension? Oh wait, we do, it’s called .xml. When I visit nytimes.com I have a pretty good idea of what I’m about to open. In theory this file extension will open an XML file allow me and my browser/reader/whatever to open the feed the way I want. So why the hell doesn’t it work that way? I open a .html file in Firefox/IE and a website loads. I open a .doc file in Firefox/IE and a document loads. But when I open my .xml file I’m suddenly greeted with the most unfriendly looking collection of symbols, tags and words I’ve ever met. This is exactly why RSS hasn’t taken off yet. It lacks the consistency…. Source: blogherald.com