Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

The Importance of RSS

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Jun 16, 2005 01:40 PM
from the feeds-are-the-new-push dept.
Businesses Google The Internet
unfoldedorigami writes "Kevin Hale of Particletree wrote an interesting essay about the importance of RSS and speculates that the success of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and Technorati has got Google worried about subscribe becoming the new search. Hale thinks this is the reason behind why they've become so interested in feed reading and the procurement of revenue from them."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

The Importance of RSS 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Web-based RSS Feed Reader (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metlin (258108) * <narayan&fas,harvard,edu> on Thursday June 16 2005, @01:41PM (#12834444) Homepage Journal

    One solution would be to provide a single point of web-based RSS feed reader of sorts, where people could not only add their bookmarks, but also just log in and read their favorite feeds.

    Imagine this - if Google could provide a good UI and simple but feature rich interface, I could log onto the equivalent of Google FeedReader and add my feeds there.

    A sort of Google-news for RSS feeds, of sorts.

    I mean, they could move people from other webmails to Gmail, this shouldn't be too hard, either. Build a nice system where people can add in their feeds and read them on the web in a non-cluttered, nice, manner and people _will_ use your system.

    That would give them more power to search and catalogue user preferences - although from a Big Brother perspective, that isn't necessarily a good thing.

    I sense a good opening for a web-application!
    • Combine that with some of the latest trends (like search-query based RSS - implemented at vobbo [vobbo.com] - example - search for 'tristen' [vobbo.com]), and you could have some really great feeds.

      I can just imagine, a feed of boobies from around the world.
    • Something like Bloglines? [bloglines.com] (now owned by AskJeeves)

    • Re:Web-based RSS Feed Reader (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jugalator (259273) on Thursday June 16 2005, @02:03PM (#12834616) Journal
      Imagine this - if Google could provide a good UI and simple but feature rich interface, I could log onto the equivalent of Google FeedReader and add my feeds there.

      I think Google Fusion [google.com] is going to do this "soon".

      From the FAQ [google.com], bolding in reply mine:
      11. Can I add other news sources or feeds?

      Not yet, but stay tuned. We chose the currently available feeds for this beta release of personalized homepages in order to give a good sampling of content from across the web. Right now you can choose from among leading U.S. news feeds, international news feeds, technology feeds, and non-tech/non-news feeds. As we continue to improve this feature, we envision enabling users to add almost any standardized feed to your personalized homepage.

      With "standardized feed" I assume they mean feeds following the RSS and/or Atom standards.

      Anyway, in this case, you'd have your RSS feeds on your main Google search page if using this feature.
    • My Yahoo! [yahoo.com] is my all-OS, all-browser RSS reader. There are other services like Bloglines that already exist.

      Yahoo! Search already provides an option to "add this to My Yahoo" for search results. Take a look at a sample search [yahoo.com].

      I eagerly await Google's revolutionary imitation of all Yahoo's progress in RSS reading.
    • Google has been doing this [google.com] for a long time. You just need a google account.

    • Re:Web-based RSS Feed Reader (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShieldW0lf (601553) on Thursday June 16 2005, @02:20PM (#12834768) Journal
      This is really funny, in a shake your head in disgust kind of way.

      The reason that people turn to something like RSS is because it lets them get to the meat faster without the extraneous crap. Searching through google results exposes you to it, searching through your various favorite sites in your bookmarks exposes you to it, etc. RSS does not, and therefore people gravitate towards it.

      Advertising IS extraneous crap. If you put it in RSS feeds, people will no longer have the motivation to use it. You'll be breaking the tool.

      It's such a joke. A new information-location technology comes out that is more effective at filtering out crap, the public jumps onboard because they don't want to see the crap, the IT guys jump onboard because that's where the people are and try to make a profit by forcing the public to waste their time looking at someones crap, and the people leave for greener pastures.

      Thing is, people came to recognize that it's not the technology that was important, but the providers of the technology... they're the ones you trust (or don't trust) not to betray you, break the tool, and waste your time.

      Google didn't rise to prominance because they have wonderful technology... lots of companies have wonderful technology. They rose to prominance because people came to trust them to filter the crap and give them what they're looking for better than their contemporaries.

      Now, google is a big publicly traded company. They shove some crap in your face when you do a search, carefully weighing just how much crap they can get away with. They corrupt and poison the very infrastructure of the web itself with their "replace key words in content with div-pops and links to advertising in a way that obfuscates the fact that is advertising until you have already been exposed to it" technology. I can't speak for others, but while flash ads and banners merely annoy me, this particular technique actually makes me angry as hell.

      While there is a large amount of inertia to overcome, this sort of shit will eventually spell the end of their relevance, because people will eventually come to realize that it doesn't really matter what the technology of the moment is, they will come to know that google is going to pervert it and waste their time in the name of profit.

      This happened to sites like yahoo and msn and that provided the opportunity for google to rise to prominance. Now it's happening to google and providing an opportunity for another to rise to prominance.

      Not a moment too soon if you ask me. If I never see another IntelliText link slip through my adblocker, it will be too soon.
      • The web used to have no ads. For a while, google had no ads, or at least they were only down the right hand side. RSS used to have no ads. It seems there's no way out, the next replacement will grow ads, though one can try and keep ahead of the wave I suppose.

      • Re:Web-based RSS Feed Reader (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Baricom (763970) on Thursday June 16 2005, @04:19PM (#12835966)
        Advertising IS extraneous crap.
        Yes, but it also pays the bills. If the web content companies don't advertise, what business model should they use?

        They corrupt and poison the very infrastructure of the web itself with their "replace key words in content with div-pops and links to advertising in a way that obfuscates the fact that is advertising until you have already been exposed to it" technology.
        Are you claiming this is Google's idea? I've seen this, but never in association with Google. You later put a name to it - "IntelliText [sic]" - but IntelliTXT is run by Vibrant Media, which doesn't appear to have any ties with Google. Please provide a counterexample.

    • Well, I doubt that Google is "worried" about RSS feeds, they're just looking at them as another source of information to search. The GoogleBot kicks the tires of my blog [makeeasymo...google.com] at least once a day, so I can only imagine that it's doing the same for everyone else's. It's just a logical extension of what they already do. Replace "is worried" with "sees an opportunity", in other words.

      Eric

    • I didnt really find one that i liked, so i wrote my own. Posted it on my website, now i dont have to remember what RSS feeds i have in my reader at home. Now the problem is making sure they are synced up, but ive reached the maximum amount i can really handle in one sitting. I used php and the magpie library (and mysql). Ended up working out well for me. Not really customisable if i was to setup a service, but hey, it works, right?
    • When I had the need to collect lots of news sources together (mostly due to being sick of oodles of ads), I sat down one afternoon and wrote my own [wirelesscouch.net]. Over the last couple of years I've slowly evolved it into the masterpiece (ha!) that it is today.

    • Imagine this - if Google could provide a good UI and simple but feature rich interface, I could log onto the equivalent of Google FeedReader and add my feeds there. A sort of Google-news for RSS feeds, of sorts.

      You mean like this [yahoo.com]?

      My Yahoo! has been doing this for 2+ years now. Google is playing catch-up.

    • I think you would be interested in Start1 [start.com] or Start2 [start.com]

      Its put out by Microsoft, but you don't sign up for an account. Its beta, so odds are that will change.

      It supports uploading OPML files so you can export your existing feeds and upload them to the website.

      Heres a good writeup [masternewmedia.org] about it.
    • again, talking technology just cramps your thinking room.

      GOOGLE ALREADY DO THIS, without your customisation page, and adding a 'choose your own RSS' if managed correctly people will love it.

      Have RSS subscriptions in your GMAIL account (with diffing, so only new articles come up as unread etc - don't know if rss supports this? (article id'ing, else just use url))

      RSS for slashdot == correct. Using is as a news source on google news? not correct.
  • I won't be able to get this article on my /. feed for another hour...
    • I got it just a minute ago. The half hour in the faq is just to scare you, they don't really block you even if you check it every 30 sepjoi4321#]p9i'#!"^%!^£ +++ NO CARRIER

  • Amusing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NanoGator (522640) on Thursday June 16 2005, @01:44PM (#12834469) Homepage Journal
    I like how Slashdot posts a story about the importance of RSS, but their own RSS service will ban you for 3 days if you just look at it funny.
      • "Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

        It's been 15 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment."

        Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me. Is there some glorious reason why I can only post once every 5 minutes now? I don't mind, but their warning says you have to wait 2.

  • How about ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Numair (77943) on Thursday June 16 2005, @01:44PM (#12834473) Homepage
    Search being the new search? Seriously; these online search engines haven't improved much in the past 5 years (yes, it's been 5 years since Google started growing by leaps and bounds, became the Yahoo default, and amazed us all ...).

  • Yeesh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Otter (3800) on Thursday June 16 2005, @01:47PM (#12834489) Journal
    ...Google worried about subscribe becoming the new search.

    "Y is the new X" is the new "Hello! 1993 called and they want their X back!"

  • I doubt it will replace search engines... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pthor1231 (885423) on Thursday June 16 2005, @01:50PM (#12834510)
    I mean, come on. RSS feeds are useful for stuff that you check daily, hourly, etc. This is usually stuff you are familiar with, and would know how to find in the first place. On the other hand, if I want to find something out about a subject I'm not particularly familiar with, I go to google and search.
    • While I seriously doubt that the advent of RSS will affect Google much at all, Google would probably rather you search for something, then forget about where to find it and have to search for it again next time, rather than finding it once and subscribing.

      Besides, even if RSS becomes The Next Intarweb(TM), we'll still need to have someone index the billions of RSS feeds.

    • On the other hand, wouldn't you like to know if google found any NEW information about certain topics.
      • Get an alert when google bot runs across a new page that mentions your name.
      • Be notified when the when the search engine results page changes for a query that brings your site a lot of traffic.
      • Have news results that match your query pop up on your RSS reader.

      Some of these things are already available. For example pubsub.com [pubsub.com] will tell you about new pages for your ego surf. CNN has email alerts that i

    • Exactly. How on earth is RSS going to replace search engines if there's no way to find the site with the RSS feed in the
    • The Slashdot summary is misleading about the content of the article. It's about new material on the Web, of which the most important category is blog entries. Del.icio.us is good at telling you about cool new sites. Google doesn't sort by date.

      By "the new search" they might mean "the new cool thing now that search is largely done", but it's certainly nowhere near "search is over and replaced with RSS". RSS tells you about cool new stuff; search is how you find answers to questions. They apply to differe

  • the important of RSS is.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 16 2005, @01:51PM (#12834518)
    ..that it's just pure content without any layout or crap. In other words, it makes reading web sites as easy as it was in 1995.

    Of course, at some point they will start putting crap in RSS feeds (they are already putting ads in the feeds.. I agree with Dave Winer: isn't the feed an ad ALREADY??), and someone will re-invent it all over again.

    But for now it's a great way to just read content without crap. Say, that's a good slogan: "RSS: content without crap".

  • Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jd (1658) <imipak@y3.14ahoo.com minus pi> on Thursday June 16 2005, @01:58PM (#12834582) Homepage Journal
    RSS is pretty crappy, as it is a point-to-point protocol. What would be good would be if websites sent out multicasts when an update occured, as then all interested parties could monitor for that and we wouldn't get system overloads.


    (Slashdot, if I understand correctly, limits RSS because massive monitoring kills the network and servers. But if they only transmitted a single multicast on an event - such as a FP update - or every 30 minutes, the load would be negligable and yet everyone would get instantaneous updates.)


    In the end, RSS is a dead-end technology, because the network will always expand faster than any given pipe, which means point-to-point will inevitably fail in the end. It doesn't scale.


    RSS is good, yeah, but only as a stop-gap until ISPs can be pressured into enabling technologies they should never have disabled.

    • Re:Seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by danheskett (178529) <{danheskett} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday June 16 2005, @02:05PM (#12834638)
      The technology you describe is basically Really Unsimple Syndication, where as RSS is really simple.

      RSS is great because it's simple. It sucks under load, but the uses are myraid.
    • What you say applies to the web as a whole. I find it ridiculous that there is no way to have the server send content to the client without the client first having to ask for it.

      Instead of using AJAX or an autorefresh every 10 seconds while awaiting for content, why can't we have something that will just listen until the server decides to send something?

      Same thing with RSS. We refresh every x seconds, while we could just be listening indefinitely until we receive something.

      Perhaps establish some sort of
    • Yes we should storm the citidal's and demand the major backbones not block multi-cast traffic.

      I mean surely there is no way this could EVER be mis-used.

      Well, you know, except for increasing the effectiveness of a zombie bot army from being able to hit 100's of machines at once to millions at once.

      But hey! That a small price to pay for instant updates when my favorite porn site finds a new pic to post!

    • RSS is pretty crappy, as it is a point-to-point protocol. What would be good would be if websites sent out multicasts when an update occured, as then all interested parties could monitor for that and we wouldn't get system overloads.

      Right on.

      We're working on exactly that here at Rice [rice.edu]. FeedTree (paper [rice.edu]) is a newsfeed distribution system, built atop the self-organizing Pastry [rice.edu] overlay and the Scribe [rice.edu] multicast algorithm. Scribe is self-organizing and low-maintenance; everyone shares the load of distrib

    • RSS supports a system called "clouds." Just like in Soviet Russia, the feed polls you, not the other way around.

      It's a shame nobody uses it. It's not multicast, but it would still scale better than constant polling by the masses does. I think part of the problem is that the spec isn't clear in certain parts.
  • Similar to RSS, people can put whatever content in meta tags to explain what their content is about. The problem is that with everyone doing this there's a ton of data and a lot of it is junk. That's where the search engines come in.

    RSS isn't going to replace search... the search engines will just have an easier job if the RSS feeds are provided for them.
  • [...] the success of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and Technorati [...]

    It seems like sites like this end up with a few thousand hardcore users and the rest of the people using the internet don't care about them in the least. That is what Google has to be afraid of?

    I think that people making such speculation are just too short of understanding to see that the internet is more than just Google. Using the internet for something other than searching the web doesn't hurt Google in the least.
  • I think a key difference between subscription and search is that you may have use for searching for one thing, one time. As a matter of fact I'd think that this is by far the most common use of search. Maybe you hit google news everyday to check for "Free porn movie downloads" or something, and that you can subscribe to. But how about when I just have a one-time question, like what's a "xenops [google.com]"? Google's perfect for that and I can't see RSS being a big problem.

    Generic RSS subscription (where you just click the "syndicate this site" link or little orange button) is not very useful as a replacement for search because you don't get to customize anything. Unless the blog in question offers categories, then you're stuck getting whatever they push onto the feed, even though the strength of RSS is supposed to be that you're pulling the information over.

    Instead, you want to go with an RSS subscription that gives you some measure of control, specified by you. But what? A search term? I watch news.google.com for "Shakespeare". And I get every hit -- shakespeare fishing rods, shakespeare references in businessweek, and some football player named shakespeare who fell off a boat and died. Not what I want. At least something like a delicious theoretically goes one step above, because by having an army of monkeys tagging URLs by the thousands, you're assuming that you've attached validated meta data to each link. When I search delicious for things that are tagged Shakespeare, I might not only get exactly what I want, but my odds are much higher that it will be what I expected.

  • RSS and Bandwith (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jockm (233372) on Thursday June 16 2005, @02:19PM (#12834752) Homepage
    I've set up blogs for a couple of people (including myself), and RSS feeds for providing other forms of information. One thing I've noticed was that once the RSS feed was created, there would be an increase in bandwith consumed, that was disporportionate to the increase in subscribers. Far too many people have their aggregators set to fetch far too often. The increase in web based aggregators has helped since then the feed is cached and reused by many people.

  • Spurl (Score:2, Interesting)

    by camcorder (759720)
    I'm really suprised when people still mention delicious, but not spurl.net. As an social bookmarking system spurl is much more superior than delicious. It has also a nifty zniff.com, which you can search among spurled (bookmarked) pages. That guarantees no ads, and commercials most of times.
    More users everyday putting their spurl rss feeds to their blogs, even some have created tools that post new spurls when they have added as blog.

  • Pity (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MightyMartian (840721) on Thursday June 16 2005, @03:00PM (#12835139) Journal
    I feel sorry for Google. They have to run in all directions at once, even if those directions are terribly absurd.
  • if it where not for the SlashDot RSS feed, i'd probably never read the news. thank you slashdot on my desktop!
  • Ever notice that each site with NEWs has the same news? One would think that the internet would kill the monolithic ap feeds and provide more diverse coverage of world events. It seems that most news sites get their content from RSS feeds and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get their content and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get their content and THEN provide RSS feeds that other newsites pull from to get their content and THEN provide RSS feeds that other

  • OpenSearch (Score:5, Interesting)

    by image (13487) on Thursday June 16 2005, @04:34PM (#12836131) Homepage
    Actually, the convergence of search and syndication is what led A9 [a9.com] to create OpenSearch [a9.com]. OpenSearch is a standard for search results that, not coincidentally, is built as an extension to RSS. In just a couple of months a few hundred sites have adopted it -- seems like there is a market there. (Disclosure, not that there is a conflict of interest there, but I am the lead for the project.)

    And it's not just for A9 -- anyone can use OpenSearch to syndicate their search to anyone else. One example of a search aggregator other than A9 using OpenSearch is OSFeed [osfeed.com]. And example of a search engine that can be accessed by anyone is AWS OpenSearch [unto.net], which lets you search Amazon via RSS.

    So in other words, when done well search and RSS are highly compatible.

  • Nope (Score:3, Interesting)

    by smagruder (207953) <steve@webcommons.biz> on Thursday June 16 2005, @04:39PM (#12836195) Homepage
    Stumbling [stumbleupon.com] is the new search. Try it out, it's free, and they provide toolbars for IE, Mozilla, Firefox and other browsers. I've not only ''stumbled'' onto great websites, but great people as well, as they also include a nice people matching system, and I've naturally met people just through the sharing of great links.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.