RSS isn't Dead (Just Ask Executives)... - Richard

I don't know if those who have proclaimed that RSS is... you know.. the D word... actually believe it to the core or if they just wanted to push buttons with tongue in cheek. Or if they just irresponsibly use "RSS" as an umbrella term for labeling the opposition to the more, faster, smarter, better hype that is going on related to real-time web/push-button web etc. It's like so many other things where people feel the need to have a black&white issue to pound on. The notion that something must fall for something else to rise. Childish, really. Here are some perspectives... Many people were not ready for adding RSS Readers to live along-side with their "Email". With the exception of joining mailing lists, a typical person does nto concern themselves with the idea of subscribing in order to get content. And despite the ease in which this subscribing process is done (auto-discovery, orange buttons, copy/paste a url, pre-populating feeds, one-click subscribe options in the software etc etc), these few extra steps and the fact that their is another interface for managing an "inbox" deterred many from full adopting content syndication via RSS. Email software that incorporated an RSS Reader (ie. Apple's mail.app) helps but it's still added complexity. Many people just find it simpler to rely on a few webpages (which prob use RSS). But RSS is more than this idea of Reader software. RSS made it easy to let one website add content from another website. So it's usefulness was not solely for consumption by individual users but also to spread content across the web. RSS is used by search engines for improved content discovery and therefor, improved SEO. The new breed of search engines heavily use RSS feeds to parse rich multimedia content and output to a users search results. That was some of the motivation behind new namespaces such as "Media RSS" driven by Yahoo! in 2004. And anyone adept in Search Engine Optimization knows that submitting a Media RSS feed to search engines is... more... - sull from FriendFeed MT Plugin