I’m just fascinated by the fact that Really Simple Syndication makes it possible for me to have information on any given topic delivered right to me, the instant after it’s published. The novelty of it has yet to wear off, and I sing its praises daily to the “later adopters.”

I predict that soon we’ll get all of our news, tv programming, and everything else we’d
prefer to have tailored to us in the same way in the very near future.

DVR+RSS=only what I want to watch.

Over!

I think people tend to discount RSS because they are thinking of it in its raw form, such as readable only with RSS feed readers and such.

But look at forms of content management and delivery using RSS, which, to the end user, can be delivered in multifarious ways that can be as easy, as practical and as “technoless” as, for example, email.

Services like RSS to blog, FeedBlitz (email subscriptions delivering new blog posts, captured using RSS behind the scenes), RSS to web (like My Yahoo!, MSN personal portals, and soon Outlook and others)…

I’m checking my RSS stats, and this seems to be the case — i.e., mostly delivered in more usable and practical ways. The difference is, it gives back control to the end-user.

Unwanted emails are like unwanted commercials. But then, people pay a premium for satellite signals, or commercial-free, niche-specific TV channels. I think RSS is the same.

RSS is a language or process, not a medium. I know, personally, that blogs — and even websites that use blog as its guts for content delivery, rather than simple HTML — create fascinating results, pageranks and search engine traffic… faster than any method out there.

I’m not talking “blog and ping.” Sure, part of it is the relevance search engines and newsfed websites attribute to RSS (because it’s fresher, more relevant, more targeted, etc). Because RSS-fed information is disseminated a lot faster through pinging, etc.

But the other is, websites, and not just individuals, can use RSS to be more focused, revelant, targeted and niche-specific. For example, a news site is a news site. But a news site on, say, pet dogs, will be more specific and targeted. And, of course, pulling RSS feeds specific for that market — saving the user all the extra steps (and irrelevant search results) to look for that information.

To me, I look at it this way: as the Internet opens and expands our worlds, RSS brings it together, in tiny, more tightly focused pockets.

It’s like TV with “X” number of broad, cable channels, versus a satellite-fed TV with premium, or subscribed-based, channels that are topic-centric, such as the golfing channel, the history channel, the Spanish version of the animal channel, etc, etc, etc.

Rather than drowning in an ocean of convoluted information that is the web, we are opening a world of interconnected yet smaller lakes and rivers.

Sorry for babbling

Should I tell all my CB good buddies?

-over-

-James Brausch

Anybody can do it. You don’t need to own a press to access the freedom of the press, you don’t need to spend millions on TV ads or own your station, newspaper, radio, etc..

Exactly: who cares about RSS? You just want your content. As an RSS evangelist, this is the kind of point I’m try to drive home to website publishers and RSS developers, and what I think Brian has written so well about, now and in the past.