Is RSS Lagging Behind?
People just don’t seem to GET RSS. It’s a cool little acronym, and it means “Really Simple Syndication.” What makes it simple is that it’s completely text based. A feed has no javascript or anything that spiders hate, so they can skim a feed easily and be merrily on their spidery way.
Plus, RSS updates quickly and reports updates to subscribers. So, if you’re really hooked on a blog or news source with RSS, you can be getting updates immediately as they happen on your iPhone or other mobile device. You don’t have to wait, run to your computer to check for new stuff, and be disappointed that nothing new is happening. When you have a feed subscription, you just know.
The information in an RSS feed is usually free. That’s a plus. Free information as opposed to paying for magazine or newspaper subscriptions is cool. That’s not to say that some aren’t free, but most are and so are feed readers. They come in many forms from Outlook to Google to Bloglines. All either free or integrated in software you’re already using. Plus…You can RSS updates or not… It’s all up to you, and completely impersonal. So, you don’t have to worry about canceling your subscription or calling any support department to do it. You click and POOF! You’re unsubbed.
RSS is great for adding to social sites like HubPages and Squidoo. The feeds present headlines that are constantly updating, which help to keep your lens or hub fresh.
Feeds can’t be blocked like spam, either. So, if you want to write something commercial on your blog (not saying I encourage that, but once in a while, it’s cool, I think), your message gets through as long as the person subscribed decides to open the feed and read it. But the cool part there is that the feed remains. Emails get lost in your inbox, but feeds are a stream of information/messages that just show up in the order in which they were written.
You can use RSS feeds for content, but please don’t do that on a blog. I hate those stupid scraper blogs that have nothing but someone else’s content on them. They suck. Still, it’s possible to use a feed that way.
But even with all those cool advantages, people have been very slow to warm to RSS. I was reading a post by Matt McGee over at the Small Business Search Marketing blog and he gave stats that only 11% have even adopted RSS. That’s probably a big number owing to all the folks online, but 11% McGee points out that it’s a sorry figure. Not only that, but he says that of the 89% who aren’t using RSS, only 17% are interested in starting to use it.
Hmm…
Does this mean that RSS isn’t worth your time? Hell no! It means that you can be the RSS guru! You can follow folks like Jeff Johnson, who are using RSS in their businesses, and figure out how to make it work for you. You can do it much more simply by simply using a blog and adding your RSS feed to websites wherever possible.
Just because not many people have adopted that technology, 11% of all Internet users is sill a pretty big number in my book, and who knows? Might catch on. 
