Guest comment: Is RSS due a comeback?

Whether we are a real ‘techie’ or Jo Average who simply uses the internet to Google and send emails, the issue is not so much the information, but how to keep up with everything.

Our brains are used to dealing with information overload. We tend to naturally filter out most of what we see and hear without even thinking about it.  Also, most of the time we don’t worry about whether we have ‘missed’ anything. We know that if there was something important we will find out sooner or later anyway.

However, with digitally delivered news and information we are not so good at this process of browse and filter - largely because information overload in this area is a new problem. Suddenly we are being submerged with information and don’t know how to work our way through it.

Enter RSS - Really Simple Syndication. It is powerful, clever and works effectively - anyone who uses email can rapidly come to grips with it - yet it has never quite taken off with the masses. There are teams of people out there who are put off before they even have a go. Why it has not been readily adopted is key - it appears to be one technical layer too far for many time-poor people who prefer to stick with the familiarity of Google no matter how ineffective it is at digging up relevant stories.

It could be too a case of you don’t miss what you never had - they just don’t realise how good the experience actually could be and therefore don’t bother trying.

It is terms like feed reader that seem to make people look blank. As it turns out feed readers don’t behave like a search engine and are difficult to set up unless you know what an OPML file is. Furthermore aggregators only understand Americanisms, and even then what do you look under if you want to find news about Oxford?

Personalised home pages are hard to set up and deluge the user in useless stuff as soon as the button is pressed.  Little wonder that search engines seem like the simplest tool to use.

The fact that RSS does not have as a great a following as predicted has created a gap in the search marketplace. This is a gap which we are now attempting to breach with our free web-based reader - ensembli.

We have researched the market well and feel that by keeping things not only simple but familiar we could act like Google Search without drowning people in unwanted information.   Anyone who emails will feel immediately comfortable using ensembli - they will not feel stretched or out of their depth - during the beta testing we got been comments such as this was the sort of tool they could recommend to their mothers!

It is early days yet but the signs are very positive - future trends all point towards simplicity and personalisation - key attributes which we rate very highly.

By Micheal Wheatley

CEO

Ensembli

http://ensembli.com/

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