J.D. Lasica of New Media Musings has written a comprehensive overview of the RSS phenomenon for Annenberg’s Online Journalism Review. J.D. sent interview questions to take pulse of my RSS habits a while ago, and quotes me in the article (I didn’t realize at the time that he’d also be running our comments in uncut form).
I disagree with J.D.’s statement that RSS won’t be the next big thing. I predict RSS aggregating capabilities being built into major browsers inside of six months. Within two years, any news site that doesn’t publish to RSS is going to start slipping off people’s radars.
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Nothing happens in six months :-P But, I’m including IE in that “major browsers” list. Anyway, could happen. Bold prediction. You’ll see how bold in five months when nothing’s really changed :-)
i have to agree with above comment. you’re cutting (bleeding) edge, scot. i still have never even tried ANY rss client, and while i’m not as engaged in tech as you are (in that you write about it and work for an organization that makes you relate to it in a differnet way than i — let alone joe scmoe – do), i’m still somewhat of a geek.
i just hit a few pages each day. then again, my problem isn’t lacke of information (well, maybe it is….). i need to MAKE space in my memory banks, not fill it up. med school, member? :)
in any event, two years sounds about right for ubiquity, maybe a bit longer for necessity.
as far as IE goes, i think it will wait until ther’s a $$$ reason for M$ to spend resources on including it. well, i mean first they’ll have to come up with their own incompatible version of it…..
Of course you guys may be right. But if MS does stick RSS into IE things could turn around very quickly. Remember their old Channels/Subscriptions technology? The idea was basically good, but the world wasn’t on board with XML yet, esp. not with MS’ proprietary twist.
Anyway, I’ll set a reminder for myself six months hence and do a follow-up post.