When blogs emerged out of the basement to become a cultural force, they brought an accompanying technology along with them. RSS (which stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, depending on who you ask) held the promise that every citizen could, for free, build their own customized newspaper comprised only of the sources and topics that interested them.
Do you love whippets, the Whitecaps and Whitney Houston? No problem. You can subscribe to newspaper and magazines sites, blogs and search alerts for those topics and never miss a story.
My friends at Common Craft made a video back in 2007 advocating for a customized news future:
RSS was a big deal for a while. Back in 2005, it was a key part of Microsoft’s browser strategy. There were several prominent start-ups who produced RSS readers, only to be eclipsed by Google’s offerings. Lots of technology pundits were convinced that it would usher in a new phase of customized news. Others worried that it would create a million echo chambers, where people would only read news about topics they cared about.
Though it’s an important part of Internet plumbing, RSS never really caught on among Normal Humans.
We prefer to be spoon-fed
I was discussing this today, and more than one person suggested that RSS got broadsided by social sharing. That is, that link and news sharing by peers on Facebook and Twitter replaced RSS. There’s some merit to this theory. My own Google Reader usage has declined a bit thanks to time spent on social media tools.
Another possibility? Site publishers, whether newspaper magnates or niche bloggers, want people to visit their sites. They want more page views to increase their advertising revenue, and ads in RSS never really took off. As such, the very people who should have been RSS’s evangelists felt pretty chilly toward the technology.
Ultimately, though, I think RSS was just too much work. I don’t mean to sound misanthropic, but the average person prefers to be spoon-fed.
The irony is that when I’m giving talks and workshops, people often ask me some variation of “how do I keep up with all these blogs and news sites and keyword searches I’m supposed to be monitoring?” The answer, which is usually followed by a demo of Google Reader, is RSS.
I don’t have much to say about them yet, but I’m interested to see whether algorithmic, curatorial tools like Summify or Percolate will replace news readers for those of us who use them. I’ve got an account on both, but haven’t had time to seriously kick the tires yet. Do you use either tool, or one like it?
As we’re in Morocco, Julie and I are taking a back seat on organization for Northern Voice this year. I’m helping out where I can remotely, and one of the things I’m doing is organizing a new feature of the conference for 2008. This time around we’re adding a little tech non-profits expo
The plan is to provide about a half-dozen tables on the Saturday where tech-oriented organizations can set up a booth and talk to attendees. We’d ask organizations to agree to run their booths from 9:30am to 1:30pm, though they’re welcome to stay longer.
It will be free for the organizations, and they’ll get a chance to engage with 300-350 social media and blogging types.
I’ve sent out some invitations, and we’ve already got a couple of organizations signed up, but I wanted to put the call out for other suggestions. Do you know an organization that fits the bill?
I think the photo speaks for itself, but here’s the back story. I just bought this nifty micro-stereo unit that I can plug my iPod into. It’s a JBL Onstage Micro iPod Speaker System, and is pretty much ideal for our requirements–it’s portable (it takes four AAA batteries), tiny and offers reasonable sound quality for its size.
As you can see, it came with no less than eight adapters. Each one is for a different type of iPod. Remarkably, the adapters only cover the so-called fourth and fifth-generation iPod. How many more would they have to ship to accommodate every version, going back six whole years?
Sadly, this problem is all too familiar. Whether it’s browser compatibility or HD DVD format wars, we waste a shameful amount of time bickering over standards. In the long run, will anybody really care who wins the Atom vs. RSS battle? Will it really matter?
The tech world is all excited about Twitter. I’ve managed to avoid the rage thus far, and am not very interested in hopping on board this particular train. I like what Kathy Sierra has to say about Twitter, and how we’ve possibly crossed a kind of attention event horizon.
Chris Pirillo solicited and recorded some reader feedback (MP3), which includes a mini-rant from me (just after the halfway mark, more or less) about the pridefulness of blogging, and the sheer hubris of Twitter.
Listening to it again, I sound like a Twitter hater, when really I’m currently Twitter ambiguous:
Twitter, it seems to me, is hubris of the highest order. Why would I think that anybody, even my friends and family, would want to read an unedited stream of the pitiful minutiae of my life? Isn’t that self-indulgence on a grand scale?
Many stories have been lost over the centuries because of assumptions, narrow ideals of what ‘genius’ is, and the very fact that ‘genius’, a relative term defined by a few, is the yard stick for recorded history.
She makes the case that a history of person’s Twitters is an important historical record. Kathy replies in the comments of Tara’s post, and Tara replies to that. They’re way more articulate than me, so go over there and read their debate. Regardless of whether or not we’ll ever have the technology to meaningfully sort through a lifetime of Twitter history, I do wonder whether we’ll have the brain capacity or interest to mull over the content.
The other aspect of Twitter that I haven’t seen discussed is that (like blogs) it’s not a diary, it’s a performance medium. We’re not recording our thoughts and feelings. We’re broadcasting the thoughts and feelings for others to hear. That’s a profound difference, and certainly changes the context for a schwack of historical Twitter data.
Shakespeare on Twitter
Tara’s post got me thinking about how that old dog Bill Shakespeare might have used Twitter:
4:47pm Drinking Mead. Sweet, sweet mead.
5:03pm Cavorting with maiden.
5:16pm Methinks she doth protest too much.
5:34pm Bollocks. Struck out with maiden.
6:01pm Sketching out ending to R & J. Totally lifted ending from that cheeky Brooke.
6:03pm Screw the sodding play. Checking out mop boy.
7:10pm Making the beast with two back with the mop boy.
7:12pm Done. Feeling guilty about Anne back in Stratford.
In truth, that’s one guy’s Twitter history that I’d really like to read.
