Google Takes on RSS; A Simple Fix
Having been focused on RSS-based tools for the last few years, I often take a few minutes during a presentation or meeting to discuss what the acronym really means. Anyway you go about it, when you call it Real Simple Syndication, you can’t help but wonder who named the technology that, because for most it’s anything but simple. Actually, it’s not so much the fault of the technology, but rather the implementation in its earlier days, which often forced users to see a screen full of funky looking code if they didn’t have the right software.However, despite poor implementation, which was probably pre-mature for the general public, RSS is quite a powerful tool. Now, if you’re reading this and haven’t quite figured it out yet here’s my definition – RSS is a dynamic bookmark. So whereas we used to bookmark a site that we liked, one would have to proactively re-visit the website and manually browse for updates, with RSS those newest updates are simply pushed to the platform of your choice. That could mean you get the latest news, updates, or stories via a customized Portal such as My Yahoo, iGoogle, or via any number of desktop based programs.
The irony with RSS is that perhaps some of its benefactors, such as Podcasting, have actually faired better and become more mainstream than RSS itself. Well, now enter Google, who purchased Blogger (See Story) in 2003, and it looks like they have a solution, which will very simply rebrand RSS and make it more useful for the general public. As ReadWriteWeb points out, perhaps taking the lead from sites like Twitter and Facebook, Google will soon rebrand and introduce the “Follow” feature to make it easier for web audiences to do just that follow their favorite blogs.
For a technology that we’re certainly familiar with here, this is a story that we’ll certainly continue to Follow here on The MediaBackpage.
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