Steve Gillmor just made my day
If you’re feeling blue at the start of your week get over to Steve Gillmor’s post about the RSS Crisis.
The Neilsen/NetRatings report thusly: “The majority of respondents to the survey were less familiar with RSS feeds. Among the other respondents, 23 percent understood RSS but did not use it, while 66 percent either did not understand the technology or had never heard of it."
Understood it but didn’t use it? My head hurts. If someone understands how RSS saves time and gets you rich, and doesn’t use it, send them to me; I’ve got some great ideas for vacation time-shares I’d like to discuss with them.
That made me smile.
However, educational research shows that understanding something is vital to the use of it. If a student cannot apply the data then they have not understood some part of it. That’s a fact. So better understanding will lead to faster adoption and use of RSS
I am a real techno-blonde myself yet I understand what RSS is and does. And I sure as heck started to use it the very minute I did understand it.
Web feeds came up as a preferred name in the readers’ survey Amy Gahran did at Contentious.If it helps to call them web feeds, by all means do so. A rose by any other name…
It is simple. And it’s a wonderful tool for managing information. Go get your reader and start using those web feed thingies.
See Also
- What Are Webfeeds (RSS), and Why Should You Care?
This publication is transitioning from RSS feed to the more generic nickname webfeed - Web Feeds in Wikipedia
While RSS feed is by far the most common term, the generic “web feed” terminology is sometimes used by writers hoping to make the concept clear to novice users
