RSS is Dead (Update: Okay, Does “is an Orphan” Work?)
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[Update 2: Most of the clarification promised in the update below is in the comment thread. I still don't hear a lot of testimonies that RSS is really sticky with non-geeks, though, even from its strongest defenders. So I'm still wondering if we shouldn't be looking for other paths to conversion in our PD sessions and classrooms.]
[Update 5 hours later: Yet again, Clay is a victim of his own English teacher-y proneness to a turn of phrase. I'm almost finished with a post clarifying and extending this (and thanking some people for diagnosing my RSS malady). But right now I have to pick up my wife. More soon 
]
From a comment I just left on Darren Draper’s blog, in which Darren lists focusing on RSS as a priority for Professional Development workshops :
I suspect that RSS is Dead, but we evangelists don’t want to lose something to preach.
I think Twitter links, Diigo groups, Education.Alltop.com, and such are easier ways to turn people onto the blogosphere.
Just because we believe in RSS doesn’t mean we’ve converted others. I think our track record on that is miserable enough to speak for itself (mine is, anyway, with colleagues and students alike). Can we say “dead horse”?
How many of you out there really do see Feed Readers / RSS Aggregators sticking after you leave the class or workshop?
Faith that RSS is the true savior does not make it so. I think it’s more of a Model T Ford – or an Edsel.
Photo: Nietzsche by escolanomade; beautiful by dawn m. armfield
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23 Responses to 'RSS is Dead (Update: Okay, Does “is an Orphan” Work?)'
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BUT isn’t RSS STILL VERY USEFUL for creating mashups such as a lifestream using tools such as Yahoo! Pipes?
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Thomas Ho
25 Apr 08 at 10:48 am
BUT isn’t RSS STILL VERY USEFUL for creating mashups such as a lifestream using tools such as Yahoo! Pipes?
Thomas Hos last blog post..TwittEarth
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Thomas Ho
25 Apr 08 at 10:49 am
Clay,
Chris Pirillo spoke about this too. I saw it earlier, and read your post about 2 hours later. All through Twitter. There is support from outside the education realm with this transfer from RSS to other forms of information-gathering.
Not sure where I am, but interesting mind candy nonetheless. I will likely continue with RSS for the foreseeable future; and I will use other tools as well.
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Ric Murry
25 Apr 08 at 10:51 am
I think RSS is one option. It feels like a differentiation thing to me. Some people will prefer twitter for finding new posts to read, others Diigo, etc. For some, RSS will make the most sense. I think we need to offer options so that people find what works best for them.
Jennys last blog post..Best Day of the Year
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Jenny
25 Apr 08 at 10:55 am
Although I used to read posts as my reader gathered them, I tend now to follow relevant links and blogs through Twitter, and to rely on iTunes to aggregate my audio.
RSS is still important and necessary, it’s just that it’s hidden within the apps we use. Just as we no longer need to know HTML to create web content, I suspect most users will subscribe to content without knowing the acronym even exists.
Really Simple Syndication is getting even simpler… it’s now Invisible Syndication.
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Rodd Lucier
25 Apr 08 at 10:58 am
Since I use Bloglines and Google Reader (and have played with iGoogle and Pageflakes, though they didn’t stick for me), I know they’re useful. But I’m geeky and make time for this stuff.
I’m talking about evangelizing it to the world. I don’t see much of a success rate. It’s too complex to new people, and requires a change of that intransigent thing, habit.
I don’t know which is harder: climbing the highest mountain, swimming every sea, or getting others to, I dunno, switch homepages on their browsers to Bloglines.
Again, more and more of us geeks are coming out of the closet and confessing that we use our own readers far less than we used to.
But to return to the focus – and Jenny, I’ll meet you this far – I think pitching RSS Readers as an entry level tool in PD workshops, based on the stickiness (lack of) success rate, is a suspect idea.
Thomas, how many people do you know who use Yahoo Pipes? I looked at it way back, and decided against figuring out the (then) 328 steps to setting the thing up. It felt like a Rubic’s Cube. Has it changed?
I’m talking about staff development with non-geeks.
What’s our purpose for teaching aggregators? If it’s to turn people on to blogs – finding them, managing them – then the suggestions I gave above, in the post, are more elegant ways to do that, IMHO.
Now, once those fews who do convert to reading blogs step forward, then yes, turn them on to Feed Readers. But right off the bat? I think the bat just bounces back onto our heads.
And Ric, it sounds like you and I are at the same evolutionary stage. And this post is a bit of candy – a quick snack of chewy food for thought.
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Clay Burell
25 Apr 08 at 11:07 am
Rodd, you make the distinction I should have made: it’s not that RSS is dead; Feed-Readers are (or are at least in the terminal ward).
Great analogy with html.
Another argument against Feed Readers is the exponential growth of blogging. Blogging is so sticky, it actually chokes the efficiency of Feed Readers. There are just too many new blogs to subscribe to. We’re trying to contain the ocean in a lake-bed.
Damn, I’m feeling metaphorical today. Somebody slap me.
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Clay Burell
25 Apr 08 at 11:12 am
@Clay
I must be doing something wrong. I don’t seem to get twitter. Maybe my network is to small but I’m still using the RSS feeds and scroll through what looks interesting. I think i need to learn more about twitter.
Charlie A. Roys last blog post..Unleashing the Power of TED
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Charlie A. Roy
25 Apr 08 at 11:42 am
Charlie, I find having about 200 people in your network is a good number. ((I’m following about 500 right now, not sure how that feels yet.)
Then, for me, having Twitbin open in my Firefox or Flock (and Twhirl as a backup for when Twitbin goes buggy) makes Twitter pay off. The network is large enough for the stream to be both resource-rich and fun to play in.
Don’t know who to follow? You can go to anybody’s page and follow who they’re following (click on “following” on their home page. Mine is at http://twitter.com/cburell ). A good percent will follow you back, and you’ll get the hang in no time – and the beauty. It’s multi-tasking, sometimes mega-distracting, possibly addictive (but so is TV, which is a sucky alternative), but incredibly rewarding.
Hope that little jag helped. Hope I see you there. The art of Tweeting creates a new form of conversation that can be so creative…..
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Clay Burell
25 Apr 08 at 11:51 am
Yet, you admit that you still use a feed reader. (As do I and most of this crowd I imagine) There is still tremendous use for feed readers, especially for “power” users. Show me how can go through 500+ items on Twitter efficiently. OR even 100. Or even 50. The power of RSS is that *all* the content I want is in a single location, which can easily be browsed. Sure, I could go on Twitter, watch for links, sift through the mundane details of people’s lives, and click through to read an article. With Google Reader, I can go from one article to the next (from a completely different source if I want) with the press of 1 key.
That being said, I have discovered lots of little gems of blogs or articles through Twitter. However, after discovery, they are dumped right back into RSS. So, Twitter/Diigo/etc. for discovery, RSS for recovery/reading.
So, it fits that Twitter is best for those newly discovering the online world. I would definitely recommend someone use Twitter before they touch a feed reader. However, it gets to being a certain point where Twitter is too inefficient for managing articles. (Not even counting the signal-to-noise problems since most posts on Twitter aren’t the equivalent of an RSS item) I think both Twitter and RSS have their place, but RSS is far from dead.
On a side note: I have found that by far the easiest way to break RSS to people is the humble iGoogle. “Copy this text in here. Oh! WOW! I can read the latest news from The Drudge Report on my desktop! Cool!”
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Arthus Erea
25 Apr 08 at 1:00 pm
Clay, I tend to agree with Jenny about it being one possibility of many for gathering information. And it just happens to be a rather efficient one in terms of the amount of time it takes to set up, use, and then check. You’ve said it’s complex – really? Of all the tools I’ve shown to my colleagues, RSS has got to be the one they appreciate the most — “wow, you mean the information comes to ME?” I’ve not gotten into Diigo yet, but I use Twitter now, and two aggregators daily to “get” my info. (And iGoogle is always, always my starting place, though other people I know do not – like you – find it worked for them.)
In response to your question: “What’s our purpose for teaching aggregators?” I find aggregators especially useful for following all sorts of things that have nothing to do with blogs. Some examples:
- Calendars of various types have RSS feeds. In my present school, this means I know when a laptop cart is available, or when I can book the drama room. I suspect (though am not certain) that other Calendar apps like Google Calendar or iCal have simlilar settings.
- Documents — I can add GoogleDocs to my iGoogle page and be notified any time there is a change to documents I share with others. Not related to Google, within our current school portal, I have RSS feeds set up for different storage areas so that I know when documents have been changed or added.
- Photos — RSS can be used to track photos on Flickr, Picasa, and any other number of photo sites, which is incredibly useful for various purposes.
So, no… I don’t think RSS is dead yet.
Adriennes last blog post..Meme: High School Daze to Praise
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Adrienne
25 Apr 08 at 1:24 pm
Ooh, Adrienne, I think you’re converting me. Seriously.
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Clay Burell
25 Apr 08 at 1:48 pm
Arthus (and others),
This comment from Darren’s thread (to Jethro, who took me to task for this post’s title, but did it nicely) sort of addresses some of your comment:
Arthus, how do you put Diigo things into RSS? Subscribe to Diigo group entries or what?
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Clay Burell
25 Apr 08 at 3:35 pm
Clay,
I was surprised with this read. Among all the perspectives out there, RSS is still unknown to some of my teachers, tried and abandoned by some, and used by others.
We recently started a school district social network for the teachers. One asked me, “I don’t know if I want to use this unless it has RSS.”
I smiled.
I use Twitter, too, but differently that some do. I use it to record the steps of my day; my colleagues use it similarly. Following us wouldn’t be too… interesting to most. But occasionally I will throw-out a link.
The larger question is, are you willing to give-up on RSS? Is there not potential for student use (i.e., creating feeds for them?, them creating ones for you?)? RSS, as you later noted, is a technology that likely isn’t going away, but newsreaders are?
I’m not sure. Carrying around an iPhone myself, it’s very convenient to whip that out and pull up articles that mean something to me. My point is… we each have our mechanisms of dealing with the abundance of information online, and we ought to be teaching these strategies to students. But RSS is not the foe, it’s the friend (with, I might add, it’s friend folksonomy).
Eh, my 2¢.
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John Hendron
25 Apr 08 at 7:54 pm
Hi Clay,
I like Adrienne’s and Arthus Erea’s ideas. I feel that the old RSS reader is a powerful tool. When I share Google Reader or similar with teachers, etc I emphasize how they can subscribe to a wide variety of material, education and otherwise. It can become a one-stop information shop.
Participants subscribe to news services, sporting teams, information sites, television show sites, flickr pages, del.icio.us links etc. They subscribe to some blogs as well.
I then illustrate how powerful a search of the reader can be in seeking examples or discussions on a particular topic. A reader can evolve into a considerable body of knowledge.
The ability to share and publish subscriptions is useful as well.
True, there is an ocean of new blogs (if you do not mind my borrowing your maritime metaphor Clay) that will seemingly sink our RSS-readers if we attempt to subscribe to them all. We cannot hold back the tide. Unless of course someone invents a new cool tool called Kanute, Cnute, Kanoot, Knoot, or something like that. This new tool would intelligently manage what we read in our RSS reader according to our whims or needs and push back that digital tide.
Of course, we can treat our RSS readers like we now treat the Internet. I only regularly visit a few web sites now. Years ago I surfed to everything. My bookmarks were endless. I use about 10 bookmarks now. I think we need to treat our blog feeds in a similar way. Read what you really need. Nothing more.
Cheers, John
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John Larkin
25 Apr 08 at 9:27 pm
Here’s the beginning of a follow-up that I have to interrupt to pick up my wife. More soon – see the update on the post for the thank you – or just take my word for it
.
Here’s that draft:
The title is a riff off of Nietzsche’s “God is dead” zinger inThe Gay Science (and later Zarathustra). While I knew what I meant by it – a bit of hyperbole to force some thinking about the effectiveness of any sacred cow – it still stinks as a title. My only defense is that I’ve been teaching titles, introductions, advanced sentence patterns, and the use of figurative language to all of my classes rabidly for the last three weeks – and it spilled over into trying out exercises in allusive titles and such in this post. So mea culpa on snappy writing with flimsy accuracy.
That being said, I don’t think it’s too unclear in this post that I’m not denying the usefulness of RSS as much as of RSS aggregators (“readers”) – particularly in introductory workshops with teachers or students.
I am using my reader less myself. I’m not seeing more than maybe 3% of students and teachers to whom I’ve presented it using it at all months (for teachers) or a year (for students) later. So I do question the over-emphasis of it in workshops.
Question, mind you. (Can I retitle this “Is RSS Dying?” – and if no, can we settle for “Is RSS an Orphan?”)
Good answers come in the comments in the thread below. They strongly defend the uses of RSS, and have given me pause to consider my own issues with it – my own “abuses.”
John Larkin’s identification of the Reader glutted with too many feeds is probably the most accurate diagnosis of my RSS neurosis: I subscribe to way too many feeds, partly out of friendly loyalty to people, partly out of a feed appetite larger than my stomach can digest. I know it sounds silly, but I feel like I’m betraying somebody when I unsubscribe.
That gets further compounded when all those feeds turn into literally thousands of unread posts. This causes the same kind of feeling in me as does a sink overflowing with dirty dishes or a refrigerator with foods-cum-science projects (remember college days? Mine were that way, anyway.) I just avoid it – and the dishes pile more and the mold grows a ‘fro. So I avoid more. Don’t open that fridge.
So thanks, John, for advice that snapped me out of this condition. I’m going to thin my reader down to a manageable few, and see if that revives my faith in this cow.
But still. Rodd Lucier….TBC….
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Clay Burell
25 Apr 08 at 11:00 pm
Clay,
Until I started using Web 2.0 tools myself, I didn’t see the value of RSS.
Now, I use Netvibes, and it keeps me organized on who I follow.
I also think that teachers who have their students blog, can create a tab for each class and follow the posts without having to access each one.
My other thought is that districts that do not promote Web 2.0 have shut out a large number of people who would benefit from RSS.
After Scott McLeod’s Kickoff talk in our district this year, we had an entire Middle school create instructions for parents and students to access staff posts with RSS. It’s the way they access homework updates and announcements.
I am late to Twitter, but can pull that into my Netvibes page as well, and learn about Shareski’s golf game, or what’s happening in Korea the next day!
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M. Walker
26 Apr 08 at 1:06 am
Hi Clay,
To ease your guilt (were you raised a Roman Catholic?) you can always place 20, perhaps 30, ‘essential’ blogs in a ‘read’ folder and the remainder in other folders with titles like ‘maybe read’ or ‘ease my guilt’.
Cheers, John.
John Larkins last blog post..Lizard saliva dessert dish was a delight!
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John Larkin
26 Apr 08 at 6:56 am
Hey Clay,
Adrienne’s comments resonate with me because I think the key to selling RSS to teachers doesn’t start with showing them how to follow blogs, but instead in following the other content generated by their kids.
And I’m pretty sure that for me, that will begin with showing teachers how to follow edits to student work in our wiki, our blogs and our Google Docs.
Most of the teachers that I know are open to the idea of using web tools to create content and opportunities for communication between students. Their only concern: They want to monitor everything their kids write/say/do and are intimidated by the size of that task.
Considering that the wiki service we use has RSS feeds, Voicethread—another tool that’s taking off in our building—has RSS feeds and Google Docs, a tool that we’re interested in pursuing through Google Apps for Education, has RSS feeds, I think RSS may just be the hook that gets teachers into using digital tools in their classrooms because it removes the primary barrier that keeps them from using those tools to begin with.
I’m beginning to think that teaching teachers about strategies and tools for information management should be the starting point for introducing Web 2 to teachers. Every teacher, no matter how traditional, is doing research and writing with students in classrooms.
RSS makes that work easier…..and by default, makes RSS a tool non-tech-savvy teachers might just embrace.
Neat conversation…Thanks for starting it!
Bill
Bill Ferriters last blog post..Saint Carl, Civil Disobedience and Irresponsible Discord
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Bill Ferriter
26 Apr 08 at 8:02 pm
Just have to say this: Guy Kawasaki (of Alltop.com) is from Hawaii!
Lindseaks last blog post..I float on tag clouds and blog fog
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