Marketers, do you know what RSS is? If you don’t, you should. RSS is a technology that helps users consolidate content in one place. Customers can be notified every time their favourite web site has been updated, rather than having to manually check to see what’s new on each site. RSS has been around for a number of years, but it is becoming more widely used with blogs.
How does it work?
Customers subscribe to an RSS aggregator which either sends them an e-mail (through a compatible program such as Outlook), or compiles the posts on a web page such as My Yahoo!. Each time a blog or other site with RSS is updated, the customer will have instant access to the information.
So, what’s the problem?
Only 18% of bloggers offer RSS feeds and as of June last year and only 9% of internet users even knew what it was, according to a Pew Internet Report.
What could be the next step in opt-in communications has hit a brick wall in terms of user acceptance. I think it just sounds too complicated for most users: syndication, aggregator, feeds. To the average person, this does not sound really simple.
Furthermore, many podcasters are having to clarify that just because the terminology for getting a podcast is to “subscribe”, customers don’t have to pay for the content. “Subscribe” is a loaded term; this is what we get when technology people rather than marketers (or linguists) are creating the lexicon.
A lot of people in the blogosphere forget that most internet users just want to be consumers. They don’t want to have to take time to learn the technological jargon – unless they absolutely have to.
My view on user adoption of technology is that anything new needs to be so simple that anyone can learn to do it, or so essential that every one must learn to do it.
Why marketers should pay attention
RSS will either prove to be an essential technology, or a better evolution of RSS will come along that as marketers we should be aware of and understand. A new site or service that utilizes RSS as an enabling technology in an unexpected way may be the internet’s next big thing. Or some kid in his/her college dorm will dream up an even better way of pushing content out to users. Let’s just hope he gives it a better name.
Anyone in marketing that doesn't know about RSS is tragically uninformed. It definitely has an image problem.
Posted by: DouglasT | 17 July 2009 at 12:43 PM
I agree, it's shocking! Reminds me of the "web designer" I met recently who didn't know was a .psd was.
Posted by: Devon Dudgeon | 20 July 2009 at 04:42 AM