YJL

Really Simple Syndication (RSS), Happy Belated Birthday!

According RSS History, RSS 0.90 (Netscape) was published by Netscape and authored by Ramanathan Guha on March 15, 1999. This is RSS’ thirteenth year.

My first real use of RSS was probably with Google Reader. I had known it a couple of year earlier, but I didn’t really see the usefulness of RSS before I tried out Google Reader. Once I subscribed to first RSS feed, I was hooked since then. RSS is convenient and easy way to get updates of a blog, also of other normal websites or information. I will look around when I need to get updates of a website. I just can’t get enough of it, RSS is so good!

However, it’s pretty sad to see that many people not only have not heard of RSS or feeds but also don’t know what is behind the application they have been using which possibly is utilizing feeds to provide data to those users.

Even sadder, I have a feeling for some social networking websites which deliberately not to provide any feeds or any API for updates unless they can be profitable of some sort. I speculate that the reason behind of that is the advertisements, i.e. revenue. There is no argument from me, without direct views from users, the ads revenue could go down. Also page views is an important index of rating a website. So, users have to get used to visit the web pages, although there is possible web or desktop applications for use, but many people have been used to web interface and usually web interface provides the full functionality. This doesn’t mean you should only use RSS but no the web interface, not like that at all. It only means to get updates via RSS.

RSS is neglected and deserve more appreciation and attention, much more.

I couldn’t imagine why so many people open tons of tabs to check updates from different websites, or even run a crap load of web applications or desktop notifiers or add-ons or extensions just to get updates, when you can just get all you needs with a nice feed reader and just one notifier. Isn’t that make your life easier and simpler?

You can read all updates in one place, if you spend ten minutes to read in a feed reader, you might have to spend 10x of time to open websites or go through different interfaces of application you use. And worse, you may miss updates because of different interfaces and designs.

Why people are so… uhm… so tend to go around with a long mud road when there is a more direct path? I could never figure that out. RSS is not some kind of high tech, it’s a file you can even open and read it, a first grader probably can understand most of it. If you can master Facebook or Google+ privacy setting, then you will have no problem with a simple feed reader and it certainly will ease your complicated on-line life.