The Problem with RSS, is RSS…

It’s that time of year again. The ever present New Year technology predictions are sprouting like spring time weeds in my grandfather’s tomato garden. This seems to have sparked a renewed energy around the topic of RSS. I must say, it’s exciting to see a continually growing surge in discussion and awareness around RSS and it’s various real world uses.

So let’s take a deeper look at these crystal ball gazing predictions that “this is the year for RSS“. I appreciate everyone’s optimism, but if this thing is ever going to happen we need to change our product and go-to-market strategies. Obviously the current one isn’t working.

What do I mean? We’ll for starters we’re asking the wrong questions and making the wrong statements. Instead of asking “when is this going to take off?” As leaders in this industry we owe it to ourselves to ask: “Why hasn’t it?” And “what do we need to do to increase end-user adoption?”

About 18 months ago I stuck “Enterprise RSS” functionality into our Business Intelligence product’s development pipeline and declared that Latigent would leverage a first mover advantage in this new emerging market. BlueVue already had a great deal of the required plumbing done, so it was a logical short jump for us. My notion even seemed validated in Dec 2005 when I received a phone call from one of the nation’s top 100 law firms in NYC to demo our product.

I remember stepping out of my cab onto Madison Ave. that cold December afternoon. I looked-up at the big city high rises with stars and dollar signs in my eyes, ready to trail blaze a path into every law office in America. This was an opportunity to set ourselves apart from competitors and define a new market. Or so I thought…

Unfortunately, despite a laborious effort, about the only person in the company that actually understood Enterprise RSS or how to use it was the Head Librarian. And let’s face it, lawyers are not exactly the type to jump on the cutting-edge technology band wagon. Ultimately, the project died.

From that day forward though, I have mentioned Enterprise RSS in every product demo, seminar, and training class I’ve conducted. Today I still get rooms full of silence and blank stares until someone bravely asks, “What’s RSS?”

What I’ve come to realize is that that little orange icon usually scares the non-developer away. The XML page that pukes out when you click the icon on a website is confusing and sends most people running the other direction. Albeit, there have been major steps by the likes of Feedburner, Google, Firefox and IE7 to alleviate that frustration, my gut says the typical internet user is still in IE6 and a great deal of feeds still don’t route through Feedburner or a similar service.

I believe the new feed icon is a little less intimidating, but it’s still not all that clear to a new user what it does, or what exactly a feed is. Some websites post an RSS 101 section on their site, but even those can further convolute things.

The other issue is there are too many formats. Don’t get me wrong, flexible format choices are great for content syndicates but they suck for the content consumer. Johnny internet user doesn’t know the difference between RSS .93 and RSS 2.0 let alone RSS and ATOM. So when a site displays multiple format icons they may appeal to the savvy, but are providing further fear factor for the rest of the world.

On the upside, I do believe the content hurdle is finally being cleared. This provides greater exposure to the technology and peaks the curiosity of Jonny Internet User to take the first step in the RSS self-education process.

Now we’ve taken a look at the why’s behind why RSS hasn’t taken off. Let’s take a look at what we need to do about it. The solution I believe is three fold:

1. Simplification and accessibility- We need to dumb it down for the average Joe. As I mentioned there are several companies already helping with this. But the real answer lies in “Integrated Readers”. The market for stand alone tools and readers is dead. People don’t want another place to go to get content. They want it in whatever portal they’re using at that moment. Whether it be your Google homepage, or your Company’s ERP system, the content needs to be more accessible and relative. 

   My guess is that if Apple released an i-Feeds reader that was integrated with i-Tunes and the video i-Pod the result would be explosive. Right now some of you are screaming “they already have that for podcasts”. Which is exactly my point. They mask the complexity for the end user.

2. Content Pizzazz – Let’s face it, straight feeds and static HTML are relatively boring. Some feeds incorporate images, etc. in the HTML. But what we really need is more interactivity with the content. Give people a reason to subscribe. Perhaps RSS Widgets or things similar to the banner ad putt-putt games that put Orbitz on the map. I’ll talk more about these later.
3. Marketing – As with any product, technology, or service you have to have a good sales and marketing pitch. What we need is an RSS coalition so to speak. An army of advocates educating the masses on what RSS is and how to use it. Perhaps banner ads on MySpace would do the trick :-) 

   I have a couple initiatives brewing in the background for this that I’ll be announcing shortly.

This will be the first in several posts about bringing RSS mainstream, as this starry-eyed guy still has hope that things can take off. So instead of making a New Year’s prediction that this is the year for RSS, I’m making a New Year’s Resolution to do my part in making sure that it is. Who’s with me?

-Chris

[tags]RSS, Integrated Reader, RSS2, Latigent, Chris Crosby, RSS Reader, Software, Technology, 2007 Predictions, New Years Resolutions[/tags]