RSS failing to gain audience mindshare

So why aren’t more people using all of those RSS feeds out there? Simple. There is a huge lack of understanding in addition to information overload. When you are subscribed to a feed, you often times find yourself feeling obligated to read it. For some folks, this can just be too much.

The Blogosphere. Much hyped “alternative” to the mainstream media, this modern form of samizdat ranges from partisan punditry to culinary writing to IT news and what’s happening in the world of science. Updated regularly, blogs were one of the first forms of online publishing to make use of RSS—really simple syndication, whereby an XML file allows a news browser, or more recently your web browser, to syndicate a webpage, bringing the user the most recent content. Using RSS feeds means that you can stay up-to-date with tens or hundreds of feeds, without having to check each page every day to see if there’s new content.

Although RSS feeds were pioneered by the blogs, online news presences such as CNN and others soon joined the fun, and it’s common to see a small orange “XML” icon on many pages these days. But are people using them? Not according to recent surveys: [Read the rest]