RSS Is Most Valuable For Infrequently Updated Feeds

This finally dawned on me while discussing RSS readers with a guy I met at a bar earlier this week: RSS is most valuable for infrequently updated RSS feeds.

Why?

Do you really need an RSS feed to send you the latest content from TechCrunch, Engadget, or Slashdot? These are sites that update 10-20+ times per day, so you can confidently know that any time you revisit the site, there will be something new for you to read.

Given that, here are a couple stats on how I read feeds:

First, here is a high level of how many feeds and posts I've read in the past 30 days:

And here is a look at how many pieces of content I consume per day through Google Reader:

What this tells me is that I'm subscribed to 338 unique RSS feeds, yet only read something like 400 posts a day. The ONLY part is debatable, but the point is that it's very close to a 1:1 ratio.

How can it possibly be so low? Because I subscribe to a TON of feeds that are hardly ever updated. However, when they are, I want to read them. They could be blogs written by friends of mine, feeds for obscure crap that I'm looking for on Ebay, Craigslist, or MinnesotaHomes.com.

This, in my mind, shows off the real power of RSS Readers. You're given the power to passively track content that truly interests you, no matter how obscure.

But I'd rather visit my one news reader than each of those three sites several times each day.

I agree, Shel. But the cost of visiting frequently updated sites is lower than the cost of visiting sites that rarely update since you'll surely find something new when visiting the frequently updates sites.

Hi Ed,
Have you tried using illumio - www.illumio.com? There's definitely a heirarchy when it comes to feed readers and I prefer illumio - and not just because I work for the company.

You said you can "passively track content that truly interests you, no matter how obscure." But how effectively can most feed readers track "relevant" content of really active websites such as TechCrunch. It's been my experience, the no one can do it as effectively as illumio.

illumio automatically filters your feeds to find the most interesting articles. Subscribe to as many feeds as you like. Illumio will monitor them and alert you to ONLY the articles that match your interests – even when your interests change.

Hi Ed,
Have you tried using illumio - www.illumio.com? There's definitely a heirarchy when it comes to feed readers and I prefer illumio - and not just because I work for the company.

Comments

1. Posted by: Jay Neely on July 28, 2007 12:07 PM:

Ed, that only makes sense if you're thinking of RSS as a notification system, which it isn't(well, it could be used as one, but that's purposely limiting its potential). It's a content delivery system.

Sure, I know that I can go to Techcrunch and find new content, then go to Slashdot and find new content, then go to Engadget and find new content, then go to five other sites and find new content. But why would I want to when I can just go to one site, Bloglines, and see the new content from all of them?

Even more importantly, feeds gives me the ability to control what content I receive, in terms of letting me filter it, enhance it, or do a variety of other things to it using feed Mashup tools. Just see my post, More Signal, Less Noise: The Power of RSS Mashups, for examples of the huge potential inherent in receiving your content as feeds.

Once you start thinking of it that way, you can see that RSS is even more valuable for hyper-frequently-updated feeds. If you're suffering from information overload, filtering tools are essential.

Best,
Jay Neely, Social Strategist

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