You don't use RSS? Why not?

Filed under: Text, Utilities, Productivity, Web services

You don't use RSS? Why not?

by Ryan Carter Jul 24th 2006

Continuing on our obsession with RSS today, comment 87 from James on my RSS Readers: Sound Off! post got me thinking. If anyone out there does not use RSS, why not? What don't you like about RSS, or what makes you not want to use RSS? Living in a very saturated tech world myself and being an IT administrator, I use RSS as a part of daily life, and don't really understand why you wouldn't use it (especially in my job), but what do you think? If you don't use it, why not? I have always wondered, and know that I am not going to get all over your case about it either, I am just curious. Since I am not a cat, I figure it is safe to wonder. I've heard that the majority of our readers do not use RSS, and I realize that I am a geek, not a normal person (kinda wish I was normal sometimes), so here's your chance to enlighten the binary brain of a techie. Consider this a "10 things I hate about you" aimed at RSS.

Tags: feed, opinion, opinions, read, RSS readers, RssReaders, thoughts, use

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Sean said 2:24PM on 7-24-2006

I'm as big a techo-guy as the next, but I personnaly don't like RSS for a couple reasons:
- I like reading in the context of a webpage... I tended to hit the site to read the comments anyway...
- Most aggregators I've used tend to suck (esp. with lots of feeds, it could take a long time to update)
- As a content provider, RSS allows others to use my content to their benefit without crediting me (copyright violation anyone!?)
- I got sucked in and wouldn't get anything done because the 1000 new RSS items that I could get in a day.

Sean said 2:26PM on 7-24-2006

Oh yeah... I prefer windows live mail to gmail (folders make much more sense to me than labels and archiving and the gmail interface is too blah for me).

And I think that tabbed browsing is a waste (everyone knows alt-tab to task switch. Tabbed browsing requires alt-tab to the browser, then ctrl-tab to cycle tabs. What a pain. Alt-tab to the window you want.

Gil said 2:29PM on 7-24-2006

I don't use RSS because I see no reason TO use it.
Simply put I like waking up in the morning, turning on the computer and BROWSING my favorite sites to see what they say.
Who knows... maybe a picture (or a comment) in the article will make my day more than the article itself or I might even see an ad for something for me or for my bussiness (this happens very rarely but still once every 2 months I see an add I'm interested in)

The same goes for forums. When I visit them I also log in to check messages, see what's popped up, maybe my online friend "John" or "the lovely Mary" is also online and I feel like having a chat with them.

Compare this to having the RSS feed delivered to you and you miss a lot of the experience. I'm not saying RSS is useless but for some stuff it just kills the browsing experience.

Ryan Carter said 2:40PM on 7-24-2006

Being an RSS "user" myself I find great value in all the news-ish feeds that once deserve a quick glance. There area bunch of sites that I will not put in my RSS reader for your reasons exactly, it is the experience of it that I miss. I suppose using RSS is a way of saying that most sites content is great (and by content I mean text) and the rest of the site isn't worth seeing. That is what it feels like to me anyway. I suppose it is the old "text-only" days of the web that make me like RSS.

racco said 2:41PM on 7-24-2006

i don't use it because, well... i just like surfing. plain and simple. if i want to get some news from a site, then i'll go to that site and get it. I'm never in so much of a rush that i haven't got time to click.

also, as a artist/designer i like to visit sites and check out what's going on with them in the looks department

RSS just bores me. its like experiencing the internet through email. the webs full of fantastic design (well some of it) why miss it? you really that busy?

Mohit Shewaramani said 2:58PM on 7-24-2006

I've wanted to love RSS ever since it came out. But it just doesn't become the next big thing for me. Using Outlook to access all my email in one location revolutionized my email habits. RSS just doesn't do the same thing for me.
Pros: RSS centralizes info. One place to access it all. However, the biggest advantage of RSS to me is that it provides a linear format of browsing. I find this particularly useful for sites like CNET News where all the stories of a day are never posted in a linear fashion.
Cons: Why? What's the point? Honestly speaking, RSS doesn't save me much time at all. With broadband connections, navigating to CNET News takes just as long as opening up an RSS feeder. In addition, RSS makes the web boring. Like Racco mentioned, web design is such an integral part of the beauty of the web. Why miss out on it? For example, I never subscribe to blogs on RSS because viewing the blogs in the layout they were meant to works so much better. Engadget and Download Squad are prime examples. Lastly, most RSS readers don't have a browser built in. To view a full article, you have to click on a link and use the browser anyways, which refutes the whole point. With readers like GreatNews, with built in browsers, I can see the advantage of RSS being a linear view providing comprehensive coverage, but looking at the overall picture, I don't think RSS is quite the revolution it's made out to be. But that's just me.

handsome jon said 3:00PM on 7-24-2006

Yeah, I use it to read slashdot and a couple daily comics.

But I need the pictures and comments of Engadget, Joystiq, and now Download Squad!

I second the boring / design comments too.

handsome jon said 3:04PM on 7-24-2006

Someone should build an RSS reader that includes the pictures, and even the comments (in some sort of a drop down, web 2.0 sort of fashion)

James said 3:10PM on 7-24-2006

RSS should be easier to use. It should be integrated into browsers, not into readers or fancy startpages that display feeds. There should be a little button next to back, forward, home & refresh for RSS.

If you click it, you see your feeds, of which the addresses are stored locally on your computer. Websites with feeds should have links that automatically put their feed into the rss module of your browser.

People don't use RSS because there is too much setup.

Todd H. said 3:39PM on 7-24-2006

Here is how I use RSS Feeds, check it out:

http://www.proxbox360.com and http://www.proplaystation.com

I put these together for myself so I don't have to visit all of these sites to browse through the latest news going on in console gameing.

Todd

Hylic said 4:03PM on 7-24-2006

@James

That's one of the reasons i like Opera over Firefox, in opera the rss feeds are (in my opinion) much better integrated.

Robert said 4:03PM on 7-24-2006

I personally don't use RSS because all of the "news" reading I do from my blogs I do from work. I follow these blogs from many different locations at my job and while I love RSS at home, by the time I get off work I have usually read all of the blogs of the day anyway.

WindowsObserver said 4:58PM on 7-24-2006

I now use RSS instead of email subscriptions - I find that much easier to manage then remembering or keeping track of everything I had subscribed to.

It reduces clutter in my email inbox and just much preferred for me.

Nathan said 5:23PM on 7-24-2006

I'm going to agree with James, but then disagree by saying rss should stay the way it is. I don't really want every dick and jane site out there to have rss and then have them added to my feed reader. I want control over my rss, I want to control what i read in the news.

Blue Balloon said 5:56PM on 7-24-2006

Safari on Mac 10.4 make me much easy to use RSS

I love it.

Peter said 7:21PM on 7-24-2006

Those of you who think RSS and browsing are mutually exclusive are wrong, they work very well together.
I use RSS to see which sites have new articles and if the article looks interesting, I can go to the site (directly from my RSS reader) to read it.
RSS saves me a ton of time not having to go to the site only to find out nothing is new, or having to sift through 4 pages of posts to find the one that interests me. Multiply that by 100+ feeds and that's a lot of time saved.

Rockstar said 7:31PM on 7-24-2006

Im doing my final thesis now, I wonder to all RSS experts outthere.. is there anyway so that I can import certain elements such as price from RSS?

I'm doing this compare prices thingy and I'm thinking since there is no way I can connect to (let's say) CNET database, I wonder if RSS would be one of the option here.

Like for example clicking on a product will bring your a range of prices from highest to the lowest.

Is this doable?

thanks

Indian Stallion said 8:56PM on 7-24-2006

Agree with Peter - I use RSS mainly to inform me of updates to the site and if it's interesting then I go to the site and read the full article and/or leave a comment on it.

I have around 100 feeds that I keep track on my netvibes page. It would be impossible and a huge waste of time to visit each individual site and check it for updates. Hell I even gone to the extent of creating RSS feeds for sites that don't have rss feeds using feed43.com

I have tried to help some of my less techie friends to use feeds, but they just can't grasp the concept, it's alien to them. Old habits die hard I guess.

Jaymez said 9:24PM on 7-24-2006

I don't use RSS because I don't know what it is and haven't been curious enough to research it. If it's what I think it is, I'm not interested.

HazKid said 1:18AM on 7-25-2006

I love Safari RSS. I read tuaw, downsqu, engad, etc. while i'm browsing the web, it shows how many new articles, updated every 10 min (yes theres a hack). the text appears instantly, and images appear if i'm on the internet (98.7% of the time). when i'm not, i can still read most articles whenever.

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