10.24.05
RSS Needs To Become Seamless
 By
Steve Rubel
Yahoo! has published a white paper on RSS (PDF) that has several key findings
...
• Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users
are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS.
• 27% of Internet
users consume RSS syndicated content on personalized start mpages (e.g., My Yahoo!,
My MSN) without knowing that RSS is the enabling technology.
• 28% of
Internet users are aware of podcasting, but only 2% currently subscribe to podcasts.
• Even tech-savvy "Aware RSS Users" prefer to access RSS feeds via user-friendly,
browser-based experiences (e.g., My Yahoo!, Firefox, My MSN).
• My Yahoo!
has the highest awareness and use of any RSS-enabled product.
>>> RSS
- Crossing Into the Mainstream
The middle two bullets say it all. RSS (with or without MP3 enclosures) has to
become seamless before it becomes useful to the masses. Even Google hasn't mastered
that yet. I am using Google's personal page
to access my favorite feeds and I was disappointed to see there's still quite
a bit of a learning curve for the average bear. (Via
Scoble)
About the Author: Steve
Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 15 years of public relations, marketing,
journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as Vice President,
Client Services at CooperKatz & Company, a mid-size PR firm in midtown New York
City. Rubel evangelizes the application of Weblogs and RSS in traditional public
relations campaigns.
He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog,
which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations
practice. |
