Mainstreaming Syndication
Jim Howard (in Chris Pirillo’s excellent Lockergnome’s RSS Resource) writes about the obstacles posed to the mainstream by RSS:
We toss about terms like XML, RSS, Aggregator, Blog, and MovableType with ease, because they are the tools of our trade. We embrace them, we understand them. But for the AOL minded masses, these terms are too vague, too complicated, too boring. For these people, instant messages and email are their primary tools. Google is useful to them, because it’s simple. Email is useful for them because it allows them to forward amusing things to their friends and family, and because it is nearly omnipresent. Everyone has an email address.
Jim is absolutely right. I’ve written about this several times in recent weeks [chronologically: 1, 2, 3, 4]
The vendors of blogs and aggregators are caught up in personality wars over syndication and aggregation specs and technology, and no one is focusing on making the interfaces for syndication and aggregation appealing to the mainstream.
The somewhat arbitrary threshold I hold in the back of my mind for when I’ll know the vendors are concerned about mainstream acceptance of syndication/aggregation is when the orange XML box ceases to be the primary interface to syndication feeds. It would be difficult to think of a symbol that is more meaningless and off-putting to the non-technical user than a blaze orange acronym for a mark-up language. :-/
Greg, I couldn’t agree more. This stuff won’t hit the mainstream until the technology (ALL OF THE TECHNOLOGY) fades into the background. Ideally, a user would only have to click on a “Subscribe to this page” button on a web page, and have it fire up their aggregator of choice with the subscription added for them.
I realize that the Amphetadesk xml icon does basically that, but that comes back to “Click on the picture of a pill with the XML acronym on it to subscribe to this page” syndrome.
Or, if there is an easier way, I’d love to hear/see it.
I too couldn’t agree more :-) One of the key goals of Awasu was to help take RSS out of the domain of techies and into the mainstream so we spent a lot of time on easy install, comprehensive help, etc.
But how do *you* envisage the “interfaces for syndication and aggregation appealing to the mainstream.” How do you think it should work?
(and btw, auto-discovery is already done and will be in the next beta :-))