It has been generally understood that the internet would change the way written news is disseminated and consumed. What hasn’t been clear is what forms news would take. A distribution technique called Rich Site Summary (RSS) was introduced around year 2000 that has surprisingly not seen wide-spread adoption.
Paper news reporting and consumption
Creating news information is basically a 3 step process
1. Writers work with publishers to decide what topics to write on (the topic)
2. Writers create the article and give it a headline
3. Publishers bundle the works of many writers into a single issue and distribute the content
Readers generally
1. Subscribe to the newspapers or magazines where they have interest and trust
2. Readers scan the headlines for articles of interest
3. Readers read the articles
RSS follows a similar metaphor to paper
Creators
1. Write content with a headline and date
2. Place the content on a internet site
3. The internet site updates it’s list of what is on the site in a common format (RSS)
Readers (same steps as paper)
1. Subscribe to the sites / publications they have interest and trust
2. Readers scan the headlines for articles of interest
3. Readers read the articles
Benefits of RSS over paper
1. Anyone can be a publisher
2. No ads or other distractions until you are reading an article
3. Very easy for publisher to technically use RSS – simple, no licensing, no new software
4. Can be used beyond news – upcoming events, new recipes, what is on sale, etc.
4. Readers can be very specific to what content they want. Example – see just content from the New York Times business section, front page, and Lifehacker in one screen/view
Why didn’t RSS take over the internet
1. RSS is alive and used in many places that people aren’t aware. Apps like Flipboard are driven by RSS as are many news websites. It is just not obvious how to subscribe and view a RSS feeds.
2. There is no central company advocating for RSS. Both Twitter and Facebook have similarities (and in many ways weaker) to RSS but get more visibility as they are products and companies. Open technologies get far less popular attention.
3. While easy to use, RSS takes slightly more understanding that websites or Facebook or Twitter. Site that do have RSS capability (like MyYahoo) tend to downplay RSS for Yahoo content.
4. RSS readers are not shiny or eye-catching.
5. Google. Google had the most popular RSS readers (and it was free) but dropped the product in 2013 to focus on Google+ (even less well-known than RSS). It was surprising Google didn’t evolve the RSS reader to have more capabilities to keep readership and maybe use Google+. Google alternatives exist (example Feedly) but they are not as well-known as Google.
