The Day the Entire World Gets RSS

According to published reports, Microsoft tomorrow is going to push out the Internet Explorer 7 upgrade to all Windows users via a required update. Whether it hits tomorrow or later this month, as promised, the day Internet Explorer ships is a huge day for RSS. Forget YouTube and Google, this is a major story. (Microsoft is an Edelman client but I have zero knowledge about the IE launch.)

The Internet Explorer upgrade includes an integrated feed reader. Yes, for many of us this is old news. We have been reading feeds for months or even years. However, do no under estimate the impact of millions of desktops worldwide getting not only a new browser, but a magical little orange button. Not everyone will click on it, but those who are curious will and then the fun starts.

As more people around the world start reading RSS feeds, big things will happen. It will force everyone to begin to integrating feed communication initiatives in their marketing and PR programs. News and blog posts are just the beginning. Couponing and all kinds of other communiques will go into feeds, as well ads and more. That little orange button might look small, but boy is it big.

Comments

[Bruce Barber]

Steve, you are right on the money here.

RSS is surely one of THE "Killler Apps" of the Web, and Microsoft is about to make it a mainstream feature.

It will probably still take some time for the mainstream to adopt it, though-- I remember how I never "got" TiVo until someone showed it to me...

[Avatar]

yeah, it don´t get bigger than that.

And don´t forget the MAX software.. it seems there will be a free final version of it.

[Rick Klau]

Steve -

My reading of the MS post is that IE7 will be available for download *first*, then, "a few weeks later" it will be pushed out via automatic update. Based on that, it would appear that WaPo's reading of the timing is off by at least a couple weeks.

That said, I completely agree with the assessment that this changes the game significantly. In much the same way that iTunes doubled the size of the podcasting audience in its first 24 hours, I expect IE7's feed reading capabilities to significantly grow the RSS-reading audience.

-Rick

[Hope Leman]

Is there a quasi Blummy button that libraraisn could could use in IE7 to effortlessly send off RSS code to library patrons, say, that the latter could use in a few seconds to set up feeds?

[Thilak]

The Day the Entire World Gets RSS, Newspaper editors will commit sucide.

Advertisers will start pouring money on blog.

[Narendra]

Steve,

You are spot on for so many things, but I don't think so in this case. Most IE users don't event get/use bookmarks which is a far more intuitive feature.

Mass RSS consumption will happen when the user interface changes to accomodate uses that are not pegged to the info-addicted river of news early adopters.

[David Koopmans]

I was just about to get really excited, agree with you and write a follow up post on my blog. Than I read Narenda's comment and I started wondering. We do over-estimate what people do with their browsers. What drives use of functionality? I'm not sure that people will start pushing that little orange button out of curiosity.
But some smart marketers will start giving people a reason to push that orange button. So in the end it takes both elements; the orange button on every browsers and smart marketers to give people a reason to push it.

[Robert McPeak]

The pending widespread IE7 push poses some problems for web developers, like, how to run IE6 at the same time on the same computer, for testing purposes, etc. I've found a workable solution which I describe here: http://staff.goucher.edu/rmcpeak/blog/ViewItem.asp?Entry=23

-Bob McPeak, Goucher College Webmaster

[Peter]

Is the Email adress required?

[Suresh]

I wonder if there is any statistics for say out of 100 people who regularly browse, how many of them get their daily stuff through rss. Even without a survey it would be safe to assume that the percentage of people using RSS would be very small compared to the total people browsing the web.

[video-yoga)]

I use Mazzila...and others rss readers

[David Scott Lewis]

Steve, this was a non-event. Take this into consideration when you start hyping something like Twitter. What is a major event to you may turn out to be a non-event to most people.