(From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA) By Jeremy Wagstaff
Confessing to a cocktail party acquaintance that you're a technology columnist is always a mistake, I find. Their next question, if it's not 'would you excuse me, I need to find a pillar to talk to,' is always predictable: 'OK, would you please explain to me what RSS is, and why I should care?' It's usually at that point I feign food poisoning to avoid the torture that follows. 'Torture' because it's an annoyingly simple concept that (a) is hard to explain, and (b) should be a lot more popular among nongeeks than it is. I first mentioned it in a column nearly four years ago but, if a recent survey I conducted online is anything to go by, the world is still divided between those people who are awash with RSS, and have been for years (15% of respondents agreed that the answer to the question 'How do you feel about RSS in general?' was 'It's transformed my life. I'm going to call my kids R, S and S'), and those who still respond to questions like 'How long have you been using RSS?' with the answer 'What is RSS?'
(The full details of the survey are here: tinyurl.com/3a2awf. The sample was around 100 people and, while I tried to poll an even proportion of nerds and nonnerds, it was hard to get the latter aboard. The survey remains open; feel free to add your voice.)
So: For the benefit of those who asked, and those who didn't, here's what RSS (which stands for Rich Site Summaryor Really Simple Syndication) is, and what it could be for you. First, think of information as water. A library, therefore, is a lake. The information is just poured in there, as books and periodicals. Those who want to use it wander in and scoop the water out. There's water coming in and going out, but most of it just sits there: still water, that we have to go to in order to enjoy it. Web pages are much the same. Information is added to the lake that already exists, but for the most part it's a pretty static, if not stagnant affair. Email is different. There the water comes to us in buckets. Much more useful, because the water is no longer stagnant, and we don't have to go and scoop it out ourselves. Butwe are still dependent on someone sending the stuff to us-filling the buckets, as it were-and we also have little control over when, how and what kind of information we receive. No surprise, then, that one of the shortcomings of email is that we find ourselves receiving lots of waste water-spam-along with the potable stuff. If information is water, surely there must be a way to pipe to our house just the kind of water we need, when and where we want it? This is RSS: a way to deliver information to us in a way that suits us. RSS is the piping and the faucets that let us order and manage that information flow.
It's a simple enough thing once you understand it. And, to judge by the plethora of feeds that are available now, RSS has quickly become hugely popular. In my survey, a quarter of respondents subscribe to about 50 feeds; 17% subscribe to up to 200; and about 5% subscribe to more than 500. (And this may not be the whole story: 3% selected the answer 'Do I look like I have time to count 'em?')
Indeed, if the last response is anything to go by, RSS may be a victim of its own success. The more that adventurous types have embraced it, the more online information is available as feeds. But this has created an irony: By streamlining the way we get our information, we now have access to far more of it than wecan handle. Most of us sit with dozens of feeds in our reader (the software we use to collect and read ourRSS information- think of it as a storage tank where all your information/water ends up). But many of the articles within them remain unread; more than 60% of the people in mysurvey said that they read half or less of the articles in their feeds.
How to start with RSS and avoid these problems? It's best to start simply, via your browser. Instead of downloading special software, use an online reader like the Google Reader (www. google.com/reader) or Bloglines (www.bloglines.com). Add feeds by looking for the orange button you'll see on Web pages that offer feeds and following the instructions.
But here's the thing: Don't go crazy adding feeds. You'll quickly add more than you can handle, and be convinced there are thousands more that you should be reading. Be merciless about deleting feeds that don't really hold your attention, or that you don't have time to read. Put feeds in folders depending on whether it's stuff you have to read, you want to read, or feel you should read for the good of your soul. (See the last question in my survey for advice on how to use RSS, from RSS survivors.)
The truth is, RSS is going to be big, but it has to get smaller first. We need to be able to forget it exists, and just turn on the faucets when we need them. We shouldn't notice the piping. As Taka Muraoka, the Thailand-based creator of RSS reader program Awasu (www.awasu.com), puts it: 'Right now we're just trying to figure everything out. What do people actually want? What do they need? How do they want to use it?' Of course, the idea that RSS needs to shrink isn't the answer I'll give you at parties, but probably by then you'll have wandered off or fallen asleep in the shrubbery anyway.
Confessing to a cocktail party acquaintance that you're a technology columnist is always a mistake, I find. Their next question, if it's not 'would you excuse me, I need to find a pillar to talk to,' is always predictable: 'OK, would you please explain to me what RSS is, and why I should care?' It's usually at that point I feign food poisoning to avoid the torture that follows. 'Torture' because it's an annoyingly simple concept that (a) is hard to explain, and (b) should be a lot more popular among nongeeks than it is. I first mentioned it in a column nearly four years ago but, if a recent survey I conducted online is anything to go by, the world is still divided between those people who are awash with RSS, and have been for years (15% of respondents agreed that the answer to the question 'How do you feel about RSS in general?' was 'It's transformed my life. I'm going to call my kids R, S and S'), and those who still respond to questions like 'How long have you been using RSS?' with the answer 'What is RSS?'
(The full details of the survey are here: tinyurl.com/3a2awf. The sample was around 100 people and, while I tried to poll an even proportion of nerds and nonnerds, it was hard to get the latter aboard. The survey remains open; feel free to add your voice.)
So: For the benefit of those who asked, and those who didn't, here's what RSS (which stands for Rich Site Summaryor Really Simple Syndication) is, and what it could be for you. First, think of information as water. A library, therefore, is a lake. The information is just poured in there, as books and periodicals. Those who want to use it wander in and scoop the water out. There's water coming in and going out, but most of it just sits there: still water, that we have to go to in order to enjoy it. Web pages are much the same. Information is added to the lake that already exists, but for the most part it's a pretty static, if not stagnant affair. Email is different. There the water comes to us in buckets. Much more useful, because the water is no longer stagnant, and we don't have to go and scoop it out ourselves. Butwe are still dependent on someone sending the stuff to us-filling the buckets, as it were-and we also have little control over when, how and what kind of information we receive. No surprise, then, that one of the shortcomings of email is that we find ourselves receiving lots of waste water-spam-along with the potable stuff. If information is water, surely there must be a way to pipe to our house just the kind of water we need, when and where we want it? This is RSS: a way to deliver information to us in a way that suits us. RSS is the piping and the faucets that let us order and manage that information flow.
It's a simple enough thing once you understand it. And, to judge by the plethora of feeds that are available now, RSS has quickly become hugely popular. In my survey, a quarter of respondents subscribe to about 50 feeds; 17% subscribe to up to 200; and about 5% subscribe to more than 500. (And this may not be the whole story: 3% selected the answer 'Do I look like I have time to count 'em?')
Indeed, if the last response is anything to go by, RSS may be a victim of its own success. The more that adventurous types have embraced it, the more online information is available as feeds. But this has created an irony: By streamlining the way we get our information, we now have access to far more of it than wecan handle. Most of us sit with dozens of feeds in our reader (the software we use to collect and read ourRSS information- think of it as a storage tank where all your information/water ends up). But many of the articles within them remain unread; more than 60% of the people in mysurvey said that they read half or less of the articles in their feeds.
How to start with RSS and avoid these problems? It's best to start simply, via your browser. Instead of downloading special software, use an online reader like the Google Reader (www. google.com/reader) or Bloglines (www.bloglines.com). Add feeds by looking for the orange button you'll see on Web pages that offer feeds and following the instructions.
But here's the thing: Don't go crazy adding feeds. You'll quickly add more than you can handle, and be convinced there are thousands more that you should be reading. Be merciless about deleting feeds that don't really hold your attention, or that you don't have time to read. Put feeds in folders depending on whether it's stuff you have to read, you want to read, or feel you should read for the good of your soul. (See the last question in my survey for advice on how to use RSS, from RSS survivors.)
The truth is, RSS is going to be big, but it has to get smaller first. We need to be able to forget it exists, and just turn on the faucets when we need them. We shouldn't notice the piping. As Taka Muraoka, the Thailand-based creator of RSS reader program Awasu (www.awasu.com), puts it: 'Right now we're just trying to figure everything out. What do people actually want? What do they need? How do they want to use it?' Of course, the idea that RSS needs to shrink isn't the answer I'll give you at parties, but probably by then you'll have wandered off or fallen asleep in the shrubbery anyway.