The Real RSS Problem
On Tuesday I was lucky enough to attend Second Chance Tuesday a networking event in London to bring together entrepreneurs, investors and others under one roof. Guest speaker was Saul Klein who is currently VP, ecommerce for Skype. Saul gave a really good presentation based on his insights from starting Video Island.
This was a technology event, full of entrepreneurs from the technosphere, as I mingled and talked to the people it became clear to me that a whole lot of RSS evangelising has to be done.
Today I came accross Niall Kennedy’s post regarding Nielsen//NetRatings new study, a three page version can be downloaded here. This goes somewhat to confirm the confusion :
40% of Britons receive automatic news feeds to their browser or desktop but 69% had never heard of Really Simple Syndication
Doesn’t add up does it? As a technology RSS isn’t understood, but RSS is being consumed. However, 42% knew what podcasting is and a further 35% knew what it is.
The reason for this is that RSS is really different. Email was lucky, it was just an electronic version of the mail system, you write a letter, address it to some one, send it to the post office and it gets delivered. RSS isn’t so lucky as to have something to directly compare it to.
This really shows the importance of having ‘add to yahoo’ and ‘add to google’ chicklets for your feed, people understand this and what to do, RSS they may not.
Fedafi, are the developers of the Fedafi Wordpress Plugin and a stand alone RSS generator, an application that anyone can install on their own website and use to generate valid RSS and iTunes Podcast feeds. No technical knowledge needed, no XML to learn, absolutley everyone can now use RSS for their business. Add RSS as a marketing channel to your business today.
Sameer said,
October 10, 2006 @ 11:25 pm
How about ZapTXT? We just re-launched the app a little over a month ago. ZapTXT lets a user get email, IM or SMS alerts when new content is posted. This way we use the mobility inherent in RSS but let users avail of delivery mechanisms that they are confortable with.
Publsishers can add the ZapTXT button to drive non-rss reader subscriptions too.
Sameer
p.s. BTW, I just stubled upon your blog recently - love your simplified translations of RSS into something that the rest of us can digest.