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Week 4: RSS; or, get your news piping hot!
This is probably not going to be a very substantial blog for me. Until I set up the two feeds for this course, I didn't use RSS at all, and I'm not experienced with RSS beyond that.
I was really surprised, though, at the variety of uses of RSS and the creative ways in which news sources can use it. All of the case studies really impressed me this week: I liked the idea of having library RSS feeds for different categories such as subject, genre and even journal title! This was what really turned me on to how useful RSS really is for libraries and I can imagine the implications should libraries be able to promote the finer qualities of RSS to users.
For me as a user, I don't use RSS for too many things as--like I explained during chat--I really enjoy the "hunt" for news on my favourite sites, and as Pauline very eloquently put it, it's almost like browsing through the stacks in a library/bookstore, or even window shopping. Though I love the convenience of the RSS feed, I still enjoy the feeling of visiting a website and finding that update and the initial excitement of clicking the link and reading it (Call me weird!). It is great to get new feeds and all, but it doesn't match the excitement (for me) of "finding" a new update on a site that I visit daily or several times a day.
I also thought it odd that there was a small theme of "RSS" vs. e-mail in many of the articles for this week. For me, the two are not in competion with each other at all, so I side more with the authors that RSS will not doom e-mail. Needless to say, the things e-mail does would be more complicated to do (in my opinion) with RSS, for example a one-on-one exchange. I can certainly see RSS replacing e-mail for one way communication, but certainly not for anything beyond one-way targeted communication. Perhaps I'm underestimating the power of RSS but I'm quite certain it won't be toppling the usefulness of e-mail any time soon.
Regarding RSS and e-mail however, one thing I must say I picked up on while studying RSS was the similarities between the "old school" e-mail subscriptions that one could sign up for (I personally remember IGN news that was forwarded to Hotmail accounts via a partnership) and RSS feeds today. Since I use Windows Live Mail as my aggregator, my RSS feeds "feel" very much like e-mail and I am reminded of the days when I would get gaming news of the day delivered straight to my inbox. Though it wasn't up-to-the minute, I can see how it may have been the intellectual ancestor to the RSS feed. Just another way we can see the evolution from 1.0 to 2.0. :)
I guess that's all for this week. Not so academic as some of my other blogs, but hopefully there's enough substance to make it discussion-worthy!
Thanks for reading!
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Hello Brent.
I liked your comment about enjoying 'the hunt' to find news articles and other information. I also like the hunt. I think being in the information specialist business, we probably all enjoy searching for things. I think the RSS feeds can be used in combination with our ability to search. For me, it just makes some areas of research a bit easier, and even acts as a reminder to look some things up!
Jen
Hi Brent,
This is your idea of a "not very substantial blog?" Wow!
I agree with you that the variety of ways that libraries are already using RSS is most impressive. Subject, genre, and journal title feeds are all really useful for patrons. They just need to know RSS can work for them. I believe that the challenge for libraries now is to effectively market the service.
Brent, I am on your side of the email vs. RSS debate. I can't really see RSS replacing email in the near future, especially as so few people seem to know about it and use it frequently. I know people I've talked to about RSS just consider it "another site to check" on a regular basis - even after understanding that you could check dozens of sites with just one click, it just doesn't seem to be on the radar for many of the people I know.
I don't really consider email and RSS to be direct competitors today, but who knows, with the way technology and the way people use it changes, what the future might hold?
All great points, Brent! I, too, agree on the email vs. RSS discussion. You're quite right that email is a conversation, whereas RSS is pretty much just a broadcast medium. Where the 2 overlap (alerts or notifications), I'd definitely side with RSS, but apart from that, there's certainly a purpose and need for both.
JAne
Hi Brent,
I was reading over your blog and thinking about the convenience of RSS feeds vs. window-shopping.
Even though I enjoy the ease with which information pops up on my webpage, I'm also aware that information is simply being handed (or fed) to me.
Discovering something new is perhaps a kind of thrill that individualizes us (if only in our head).
I'm not sure what's better; the newspaper right to your door, or traveling somewhere new and creating your own story?
What are your thoughts on RSS feeds acting more like advertisements than news disseminators?
Just a question :)
I agree with you that RSS feeds seem to be more often advertisements than news dissemenators. I mean, certainly, the user does have to choose to receive them and, certainly, they offer news, but if you've subscribed to more than one feed of the same "genre" you may get a lot of repeated "news", at which point the process of picking through all of your feeds may be more difficult than just going out to the website and "hunting" for what you need. heh
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