The trouble with RSS is… RSS.
Us geeky types (c’mon you are one, in denial or blissfully unaware) are ok with the whole Really Simple Syndication thing. I mean, most of us are just about ok with it. I’m entrenched in the ‘I know how to subscribe to a feed in Google Reader’ category, but I’m by no means beholding talismanic assertions over the subject.
I ran a straw poll of my normal friends earlier today to understand the extent of their RSS knowledge. Two Simple steps (to subdue them and limit their running away in droves screaming ‘freak’):
1. How do you subscribe to an RSS feed?
2. What does RSS stand for?
Unastonishingly (as a writer I practice with righteousness the black art of making up words) 14 out of 15 people didn’t have a clue how to answer 1. And this was the Really Simple question of the pair. Question 2, as predicted, was an absolute wipeout so far as credible responses were concerned, but it did yield some interesting comments:
“Why should I give two coins of crap?” “I didn’t go to school purposefully so as not to know this stuff” and my personal favourite, “Rub Salt in Stains”. I now wonder whether, had the inventor of the RSS service subscribed to an acronym akin to Danny’s cure for red wine spots, we wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in.
RSS is nerd. To non-binary-kissers it’s as easy as climbing stairs on a snake.
RSS couldn’t have been any more inaccessible if we’d put it in a Swiss bank vault entombed by a self-perpetuating wall of active plutonium atoms.
I have asserted from my impromptu survey that unless someone magicks up a way of making RSS friendly to human beings, we’re in danger of missing out on the potential of one of the greatest services in the armoury of us content producers.
The orange box with the dot and curves just doesn’t cut the mustard. Sure we’re making it slightly easier for people to sign up for updates via RSS with our neat WordPress plugins and gnarly apps designed to collect and collate these funky feeds.
But we’re not working on ways to get people to actually view these damn feeds.
14 out of 15 people – scaled up to global levels that’s approximately the same number of people as dollars found down Barry Obama’s mink-effect DFS couch the other day – don’t even have a frickin clue what RSS is. So what chance do we have to tell them what they’re missing out on?
Feedreader, great. Google Reader – lovely. Guy Kawasaki’s new gig, Alltop is a joy of browsable, customised info from across the web sat on an RSS backend.
But the majority of people are not, and will not, use this stuff until we start giving it a fluffy, friendly face. A TV ad sweetening the deal like the PC v Mac interstitial. A splash on the rear of a cornflake packet with Rita Rhubarb the RSS Reader.
ITV or BBC recently put out a great ad for their online TV-on-demand service based on the tagline “making the unmissable, missable”. The theory being it was TV, ready when you are.
This in essence is what RSS needs to grow into. A service bringing you everything you need, when you need it. Don’t miss a minute.
Right now it means something to 1 person in every 15.
The guy who knew how to subscribe to an RSS feed? The same guy whose WordPress site I set up two weeks ago with RSS functionality built in!