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Hi, I'm William. I'm the Director, Online Banking & Engagement at Vancity, Canada's largest credit union.

My opinions and views are just that, and don't reflect the views of my employer (or, perhaps, anyone else).

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Common questions about RSS.

I have had a few people tell me recently that they check out my blog, but don't subscribe to my RSS feed because they don't quite get what RSS is.

It's a common problem. RSS is one of those things that's easy once you try it, but is hard to explain.

And so, I refer you to the following video by the amazing people at Common Craft. If you ever run across a social media concept that you don't understand, keep Common Craft in mind because they produce these helpful, simple videos that explain sometimes complex solutions.

Watch and enjoy!

By the way, this clip can be found here.

UPDATE: I should mention, you can always click this button to subscribe to my feed.

Labels: RSS, social media, video, web 2.0

posted on Thursday, January 10, 2008

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5 comments
Thanks for posting that!
comment from Tiven on January 10, 2008

William,

Your post reminds me of just how slow RSS adoption has been to hit the mainstream. Remember being told that when IE 7 was released it's built in RSS Reader would get the masses on board?

What level of adoption are we actually expecting with this technology? Will it ever be on par with email? Will it even reach as many people as Instant Messaging does?

If it's not, why to we keep adding it to everything published online? Why not look at ways to easily allow your content to be syndicated through IM or twitter even?

Interested in your thoughts...
comment from

Mark on January 12, 2008

Hi Mark. I agree, I thought adoption of RSS would be quicker too. It doesn't have the feeling that email or IM have, in that it isn't as accessible or easy to "get".

Maybe you're right, maybe RSS is a geek thing that will evolve or combine with something like IM to be more mainstream.

I am sure that RSS has better adoption than Twitter.

Also, I don't want to overplay it - most people I speak to know what RSS is - it's just one or two people recently who told me they visit my blog, but didn't use RSS feeds. Analytics tells me that most people who visit my posts get there via RSS (or Twitter), so it works in most cases.

Thanks for the comment, Mark!
comment from

wazaroff on January 12, 2008

Also, Mark, isn't RSS a useful way for developers like yourself to aggregate information for their own purposes? It has usefulness beyond consumer subscriptions. The work you did with feed aggregation for Banktastic is proof of that.

What's your take on that?
comment from

wazaroff on January 12, 2008

Technically I love RSS. It's great to have a uniform method of publication that can serve as a foundation for a number of useful tools and services.

My question isn't about the actual technology, just about the adoption. A technology is only as good its adoption. (??? Maybe ???)

I think that sometimes we (me especially) end up trying to reach people where we wish they were instead of where they are.

(For the record, I wish everyone used RSS and surfed the web with Firefox while on their Macs. It would make my technical life much easier.)

Great conversation...
comment from

Mark on January 12, 2008

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