The Future of RSS
We’ve all seen it. Tucked away in the corner of our favorite blog site and practically hidden between the “Like” and “Tweet” apps on the latest news story. The RSS subscription widget has been hailed by many in the blogosphere as a dying feature of the internet. Is the little orange widget actually in decline or just being overlooked? Does it have a place in the ever evolving world of web 3.0?
Let’s start from the beginning. RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, was developed in the ‘90s to enable websites and blogs to push content to subscribers, a much-needed shift from the process of manually checking bookmarked websites for updates. With its applications in the blogosphere as well as in web development, RSS feeds have become known for abilities including bringing in new web site visitors, improving search engine rankings and generating brand interest.
Despite their practical applications, many experts claim that RSS feeds are becoming obsolete under the dominance of social sharing giants like Twitter and Facebook. Why would you subscribe to the RSS feed of a website or blog when you can follow it on Twitter and get all the same updates? While Twitter and Facebook do serve as useful tools for providing instant updates on news and world events (ex: news, and parodies, of the October 2011 earthquake in Virginia spread like wildfire on Twitter), RSS feeds still fill a unique need. According to an April 2011 poll, 62.3 percent of respondents subscribe to 10 or more RSS feeds and more than half read those feeds (via aggregators like Google Reader) every day. While Twitter and Facebook serve as great sources to receive breaking news, RSS feeds deliver updates that can easily get lost in the constant clutter of a news feed.
The rise of tablets and smartphones has amplified the role of RSS feeds over the past year. Popular apps such as Flipboard for the iPad put a new face on RSS feeds, presenting an unlimited number of feeds in the form of a digital magazine. Flud is another up-and-coming social reader app that allows you to flip through different feeds to see the headlines of different sites. These clever uses of RSS feeds package content in a more aesthetically pleasing way, a far cry from a simple list of articles.
To recap, RSS feeds have numerous practical applications of value to marketers and consumers alike, and are being revitalized by ever-developing apps. Does that sound like a declining technology to you?
