Tag: rss

Scripting News: Rebooting RSS, revisited

In September of last year I wrote a series of pieces about rebooting RSS. I think it’s inevitable, given the popularity of Twitter, and the new use of the net to distribute leaks about governments, that the service offered by Twitter will be unbundled. And RSS, or something exactly like it, will be at the center of that unbundling. That was the premise of the series I wrote last year.  Permanent link to this item in the archive.

All I’m doing here is linking back to those pieces, in order, because they’ve come up in various offline conversations I’m involved in. Having the list in one place saves me the trouble of sending it via email several times.  Permanent link to this item in the archive.

9/13/10: How to Reboot RSS. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

9/16/10: The Architecture of RSS. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

9/18/10: Yes, Virginia, there are two ways to read RSS. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

9/18/10: Rebooting RSS, pulling it together. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

9/20/10: Rebooting RSS, short names for feeds. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

9/22/10: Rebooting RSS, interlude. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

9/24/10: Why use RSS? Permanent link to this item in the archive.

9/27/10: How to use open formats. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Related, but not exactly on-topic for this thread, 7 free ideas for an academic Hackathon, and 4 more free ideas. They’re related because almost all of these ideas create components for the open version of Twitter.  Permanent link to this item in the archive.

via scripting.com

rss users read more news

What are the advantages of using rss feeds?

Nielsen NetRatings in New York
recently reported that RSS users significantly read more online news
than non RSS users, visiting an average of 10.6 news sites compared
with 3.4 news sites for non users.

 

Apart from simply reading more online news articles than non RSS users, RSS
users visit news site more frequently. RSS users visited the top 20
news Web sites nearly three times as often as non-users and all other
news Web sites four times as often. This means that sites outside of
the top 20 properties may be among the greatest beneficiaries of RSS.

 

For the full report click here.

The report is from 2005. Interesting quote:

“Men tend to be early and aggressive technology adopters, but it may come as a surprise that the youngest Internet users were not the most RSS savvy,” said Gibs. “RSS users are particularly focused on breaking news, and trend toward an older demographic,” he continued.

If it’s breaking news then presumably both academics looking for the latest research and students looking for the latest content from academics should be prime movers.

The research comes from 2005. Since then the big thing which has changed the adoption of feed reading is the news feed in the profile page on Facebook. That seamless integration has introduced millions to the idea of keeping up to date through rss.

Can we lever that kind of use in an academic context?

My use of RSS

For some time now I’ve been wanting to evangelise on the benefits of using rss (or really simple syndication) to control the tide of information coming at us as we resemble more and more terminal ants on the keyboard of life.

For the past three years rss has been proclaimed as the tool to usher in the new era of the web. But it hasn’t really caught on. Most people think its geeky, too complicated and/or that it leads to information overload (ie more information overload). However …

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