I had an interesting discussion with two of my co-workers yesterday. We all use FeedDemon and are getting addicted to our many RSS news feeds. We find RSS particularly valuable for monitoring client, industry news and what the media is covering in general. One of my colleagues asked me a couple of really good questions: "Why doesn't everyone use this stuff? Why is it that when we talk about RSS we get blank stares?"
The truth is, for all the hype about RSS, it's still trapped in geekland. It's moving mainstream, but it is taking time. So, what will it take for RSS to reach a tipping point? The answer is not mass adoption by news outlets, but mass adoption by b-to-b and b-to-c e-commerce sites. Take a look back in history for perspective.
Remember the early days of the Web circa 1994 when major news organizations raced to launch Web sites? The tech publishers, such as CMP and Ziff Davis, were early adopters. They were quickly followed by mainstream news outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC. Media coverage about the Web mushroomed and the Internet audience began to grow. However, the Internet at this stage still lacked the killer app that captured the attention of millions of moms and dads. This all changed with Amazon.com and eBay. Once people saw they could buy stuff online quickly and easily, Internet adoption began to accelerate.
RSS today feels like the Web 1994. The geeks have long caught on. The big tech sites all have RSS feeds and increasingly, so do mainstream news outlets like Time magazine and others. Media coverage of RSS is also rising, yet overall awareness is still low. So, here's the trend to watch: commerce sites will increasingly find creative ways to use RSS feeds to alert customers and drive sales. Amazon and eBay are already on board. Brokerage sites like Schwab, bill payment/bank Web sites, retailers, major manufacturers, real estate brokers and others will all soon follow. Hopefully newspapers will recognize the opportunity here too by making their classified ads available via RSS. You can bet that MSN, Google and Yahoo are already thinking about building RSS feeds into their shopping sites.
In short, mass adoption of RSS will begin once consumers realize they can use the technology to easily find items they want to buy and sell. News via RSS, in and of itself, won't do the trick, but it certainly does help.
