RSS – Are We Overlooking The Obvious?

“RSS” isn’t exactly new technology. The New York Times began offering its readers the ability to subscribe to RSS news feeds back in November of 2002. But I regularly encounter people who still – to this day – don’t know what RSS is, or how to use it to their own advantage: not as marketers, but as consumers of information.

In October, 2008 Steve Rubel wrote “RSS Adoption at 11% and it May Be Peaking, Forrester Says” - this, despite the fact that nearly half of “interactive marketers” were using RSS at the time.

For a technology that is in so useful, so widely and so freely available… it seems inconceivable that so few people actually use it.

Are we Overlooking The Obvious?

In the age of Google, “Web2.0″ and “Social Media”, marketers are immersed in information technology. We have to be. It’s sink or swim. But somehow, it would seem, we began taking our knowledge of RSS feeds and readers for granted… assuming that everyone else has kept pace with us. They haven’t.

Written on March 17, 2010 by JonAston