If It's Not XML …

I have to disagree with you here, especially when it comes to a non-blog website.

I’ve found bloggers seem to gravitate more and more towards reading blogs and finding content that way. In that regard, rss feeds are great and helpful and all that. I’m much more likely to visit it again, especially if my Trillian plug-in can reed the feed.

However – when it comes to big-media: ESPN (TSN for the Canadians), CNN or CBC or whatever, there need be no feed. I’d like one, but I’m going back either way, there’s more to the site then just text and I’d like to see it. I also like some real-time features, especially when talking about sports (ESPN happens to have a few rss feeds in regards to sports, and has a searchable one for columnists).

I also still do a lot of forum reading, even if I can’t respond to nearly the amount of posts I’d like to. I have feeds for some, but still visit the site as most feeds are for new threads, not replies (which frankly, is the way I want it – I don’t like having to add and drop feeds all the time).

Basically I’ll find the news and other content I want right now, no feed needed.

I’ll quote ya here:

As far as the “general web”… I never, ever do any surfing. But I will click on a link in a feed to go to a site that’s talked about, and from there cruise elsewhere or whatnot.

Well… what else is involved in surfing? :)

I’ll assume you mean to say you do almost none now compared to before and this is because of rss feeds. I can accept that, but I think that may just refelect your browsing habits. To someone who browses like I do (mostly insta-news or search missions), feeds have made a very small impact. Few of my news sources have put out their own feeds (yes, other sites generate them, but I don’t always like using them).

Some feeds have help “keep up” – Wired and Slashdot for instance. Tech sites are good with feeds and it makes it easier to keep up with the latest for that sector. Outside of tech sites and blogs few are doing it well (btw, I’ll note that many political and gossip sites, sometimes one in the same, are moving towards more blog-like formats). A feed for Fark can be a fun break in my day.

I like feeds more for website linking. Why link to someone else’s website when you can just link to the latest news/postings on it? I think it’s great, offers more information to the visitor about where they might be going. I think the turn on vs turn off is about equal there.

I admit I do have some problems with it tech-wise, especially the rss vs atom thing. What to provide (or both), having to parse each to put someone’s feeds on your website, things like that. I think that’s a bit off-course from this though.

So now we’re back to the feeds, reading and who’s doing what – for blogs and opinionated people, and certainly everyone in the opensource community – things like rss feeds are a great way for communication and grabbing info in your own setting. Most of those people are just looking to be heard, and that makes them happy. A corporation? Perhaps their press releases. But rarely are these feeds from sites that are there to do what you know I’m getting at: make money. For this reason alone I don’t think we’ll see too many of the types of sites I visit put out their own feeds. Perhaps a title, link and short descrip, but that’s all, and frankly – how much will that really help them? They already have people visiting every second looking to see what’s changed – are they really going to pull more in with a blurb feed? When truly thinking about user habits, I doubt it honestly.

Now, I know what’s coming: there are a few ways to make a little money with a feed – but currently I don’t see any of it as a viable alternative to website money and few of these sites want to risk losing website money to get some feed money as they probably won’t balance out.

Another reason I’m not always keen on feeds is for the site itself. The design, the photos and images they may accompany a story – and again, some of these things can be embedded into a feed – but why do it? I fail to see the incentive for most large sites to do this.

ESPN had an alternative – videos. They have “ESPN Motion”, it’s essentially a small program that updates an xml feed along with some videos. Where’s the money? Good ole fashion advertising. Of course, it shouldn’t be too hard to mark something up to ignore the ad videos, but I doubt most are going through the trouble.

There are problems with it though. First is that cable may be many places, but it still doesn’t mean I want chunky videos downloading at times when I’m trying to do other things on the net (and some of these vids were definitely decent sizes). Another is that I’m not ready to watch commercials over the internet yet, at least not for what was being provided. Yet another is frequency of updates. Out of maybe a handful of new clips a day, I’m rarely interested in more then one. Wasted bandwidth, wasted time, little result.

Ok – I have to settle down, reading though this – I’m all over the place. Whoops, if I had more time I’d organize these and probably expand more on the ones on-topic and save some others for another day, but oh well…

Let me summarize my thoughts quickly:

* I love rss (didn’t think I was going to say that, huh?). It lets me syndicate my sites easily. No javascript, nothing bulky and many can read it. Good stuff. I do wish it was better. It’s good for articles, not for many of the stats some want from my site.

* It’s just “not there yet”. There are too many things that still need to be developed and perhaps even a small standards war. It’s rarely replacing anything for me, just adding more for me. And perhaps that’s all I needed to write. The fact is I still have to browse and do all the same things to get most of the information I want.

-David