RSS Readers?
Is Anybody Listening Out There?
As OMS has just recently started this blog site, I was reminded by our CTO to put a reminder in our last email mail-out for people to add our blog site to their RSS Readers. Now, there is something I never setup myself. I rely on good old email and my own searching of the web to find out what’s new in the world.
Although I have never seen any statistics not even anecdotal, I am guessing I still in the majority of people not using an RSS reader (but that’s probably shrinking). The concept of needing to know immediately whenever any interesting sites are updated, made little sense as I am interrupted enough as things are.
About a year ago, our Digital Product Management tool RESCUE enabled an RSS feed for product alerts, in addition to the traditional email method. It seemed to me at the time, this was useful for this specific case. I guess I always thought of using the RSS Reader like instant messaging (which I also do not use due to the interruption factor).
But here is the thing that I realized (okay a little slow on the uptake) unlike IM I do not need to be listening constantly, I can use it to go gather the data (updates) and then look at them at that time or so I assume. I guess I am interested if and how others are using the RSS Reader function and why. Quite possibly I am missing the true power of a productivity tool rather than wasting time with the hunt and look method or worse waiting for the message to arrive in my inbox several hours/days later on things I am interested in.
So if anyone is out there listening, let us know how you feel about RSS Readers and what you recommend or at least what works for you.
Roger,
Steve Rubel over at Micropersuasion was thinking about the same subject, with an admittedly different twist.
Link to Steve’s post is here
Jay Nash
October 13, 2008 at 11:55 am
Hi there, I was directed to you from Gary Zellerbach’s blog. I am very interested in software distribution so I thought I would subscribe and see what you are discussing.
I think RSS is great. It’s a much less intrusive way of getting the information I am interested in. Somehow, when it’s a subscribed RSS feed, I will check in on it more often than if it were just an email. Spammers have given email marketing a very bad name, I’m afraid.
I’m using Bloglines to keep in tune with my feeds. No particular reason why – it was the first newsreader I decided to use: but also I have no particular reason to change. I also have some RSS feeds connected with my email application in work.
Colm
October 13, 2008 at 17:02 pm