While working today I listened to the RSS Winterfest, a free audio-only conference about RSS hosted by many top names in blogging.
Chris Pirillo, aka the Lockergnome, had a comment during the "What is the future of RSS?" session that I strongly disagree with: "RSS is good enough."
I strongly disagree with this comment. While I agree RSS is good, I believe RSS is not good enough to become mainstream. Here are my reasons:
1) RSS feeds do not have a history. This means that when you request the data from an RSS feed, you always get the newest 10 or 20 entries. If you go on vacation for a week and your computer is not constantly requesting your RSS feeds, when you get back you will only download the newest 10 or 20 entries. This means that even if more entires were added than that while you were gone, you will never see them.
2) RSS wastes bandwidth. When you "subscribe" to an RSS feed, you are telling your RSS reader to automatically download the RSS file on a set interval to check for changes. Lets say it checks for news every hour, which is typical. Even if just one item is changed the RSS reader must still download the entire file with all of the entries.
3) Reading RSS requires too much work. Today, in 2004, we call it "browsing the Web" - not "viewing HTML files". That is because the format that Web pages happen to be in is not important. I can just type in "msn.com" and it works. RSS requires much more than that: We need to find the RSS feed location, which is always labeled differently, and then give that URL to my RSS reader. The user should never have to hunt for the orange XML button (OT: Why is it labeled XML and not RSS?) or a link that says "Syndicate This." How subscribing should work: In my RSS Reader I type "dylangreene.com" and I see a list of feeds that I can subscribe to. Each feed has a one-sentence description, and I can preview what I'm going to get by subscribing. Newsgator, a shareware RSS Reader Plug-in for Outlook adds a cool button to IE's toolbar that, when you click it, searches the page for the RSS feed and subscribes you. This is a good step, but the button doesn't always find the feed, and when there's multiple feeds on the page, I don't know which one it's going to choose.
4) An RSS Reader must come with Windows. Until this happens too, RSS reading will only be for a certain class of computer users that are willing to try this new technology. The web became mainstream when Microsoft started including Internet Explorer with Windows. MP3's became mainstream when Windows Media Player added MP3 support. Many don't want Microsoft to control the RSS Reader market, but this is a vital step to gain mainstream usage in a world where most computer users simply don't know how to (or are afraid to) download new software.
5) RSS content is not User-Friendly. It has taken about 10 years for the Web to get to the point where it is today that most web pages we visit render in our browser the way that the designer intended. It's also taken about that long for web designers to figure out how to lay out a web page such that most users will understand how to use it. RSS takes all of that usability work and throws it away. Most RSS feeds have no formatting, no images, no tables, no interactive elements, and nothing else that we have come to rely on for optimal content readability. Instead we are kicked back to the pre-web days of simple text. If you want to see the pictures, tables, and other formatting that makes information on the web easier to read (and often more interesting than the plain-text equivalent), you must click a link to open your browser to visit the web page - bringing you right back to where we are today: a slow-loading web page. Some RSS feeds can render HTML, but not all RSS readers support correctly rendering the content, and most feeds don't even include the formatting.
6) RSS content is not machine-friendly. There are search engines that search RSS feeds but none of them are intelligent about the content they are searching because RSS doesn't describe the properties of the content well enough. For example, many bloggers quote other blogs in their blog. Search engines cannot tell the difference between new content and quoted content, so they'll show both in the search results.
7) Many RSS Feeds show only an abridged version of the content. Many RSS feeds do not include the full text. Slashdot.org, one of the most popular geek news sites, has an RSS feed but they only put the first 30 words of each 100+ word entry in their feed. This means that RSS search engines do not see the full content. This also means that users who syndicate their feed only see the first few words and must click to open a web browser to read the full content. From what I've seen, Movable Type, one of the most popular free blogging packages, only supports small snippets in the RSS feed, again adding to the amount of work required to read the feed.
8) Comments are not integrated with RSS feeds. One of the best features of many blogs is the ability to reply to posts by posting comments. Many sites are noteworthy and popular because of their comments and not just the content of the blogs. The Dullest Blog in the World gets 100-400 comments for every painfully dull post. Comments in Scoble's blog have started movements both inside and outside Microsoft that will effect features in upcoming products. RSS feeds often link to the URL where comments can be found, but the actual comments are not part of the feed, and most sites don't even have an RSS feed for the comments. This means that you have to manually click on the comments link to open a new browser window to see if there are comments, and then revisit that web page to see if anybody replies to your comments. This should be automatic: Entries should show the number of comments, the comments' content, and optionally inform me when replies to my comments are posted. RSS Search engines should also be able to search the content of the comments.
9) Multiple Versions of RSS cause more confusion. There's several different versions of RSS, such as RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and RSS 3.0, all controlled by different groups and all claiming to be the standard. RSS Readers must support all of these versions because many sites only support one of them. New features can be added to RSS 1.0 and 2.0 can by adding new XML namespaces, which means that anybody can add new features to RSS, but this does mean that any RSS Readers will support those new features.
10) RSS is Insecure. Lets say a site wants to charge for access to their RSS feed. RSS has no standard way for inputing a User Name and Password. Some RSS readers support HTTP Basic Authentication, but this is not a secure method because your password is sent as plain text. A few RSS readers support HTTPS, which is a start, but it is not good enough. Once somebody has access to the "secure" RSS file, that user can share the RSS file with anybody. If a site wants to charge for their RSS feed, there is no way to prevent subscribers from sharing the RSS feeds with other people because RSS does not have a standard for encryption, digital rights, or any other modern security features. I think this will hurt commercial uses for RSS.
Again, I am I huge fan off RSS-style technology. This technology is the TiVo of the Web: I only see what I want to see. Every site I ready (except two stubborn ones) I only read via RSS, however I am usually up with the latest technology, and I think there is a ways to go before there is mainstream RSS acceptance and use.
