--- title: "Why is RSS adoption so low? Here's why." url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/13/why-is-rss-adoption-so-low-heres-why.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/13/why-is-rss-adoption-so-low-heres-why.html" published: "2004-03-13T21:09:00" updated: "2004-03-13T21:09:00" tags: ["Blogging"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Why is RSS adoption so low , asks Scoble ? and the answer lies, of course, in the obvious. It's still too hard to start with it. And yes, I mean even the geeks I hang out with. Hell, even I find it less than tolerable…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Why is RSS adoption so low? Here's why. By Roy Osherove March 13, 2004 In [Blogging](https://osherove.com/blog/category/blogging) **Historical article** · Originally published March 13, 2004; technical details may be outdated. Why is [RSS adoption so low](http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/03/13.html#a6997), asks [Scoble](http://scoble.weblogs.com/)? and the answer lies, of course, in the obvious. It's still too hard to start with it. And yes, I mean even the geeks I hang out with. Hell, even I find it less than tolerable sometimes. What do I mean? ### **You have to work hard to read RSS news** - Find out what RSS means - Someone actually has to convince you to read RSS news, or you need to proactively find out what it means. Although a lot of sites are now starting to let out some feeds, its still not mainstream enough and a lot of times the XML icons are nothing more small decorative icons without so much as an explanation as to what they mean. - Find a news reader - Again, you have to proactively search for it or get a recommendation from a friend. You dont get a news reader that is built-in with windows. For example, how many people do you think would read newsgroups if Outlook express was not installed by default? Or if it had no newsgroup ability? Just to clarify how much this built-in means to the end user, consider that outlook express is by far one of the most down grade news readers out there, and that there are a lot of worthy and easy to use news readers that are free! How many do you know? How long did it take you to find out about them? What made you move over and use them? Would you **ever** use them if you didnt have outlook express installed in the first place? - Download and install it - Sometimes installing means unzipping a file to a folder and running an EXE, and sometimes its a full fledged installation program, but nevertheless, its still not as  easy as it should be (some advanced readers are starting to look more on the professional side though). - Sometimes the download site itself is a hobbyist site. This whole RSS thing is so new, it still has that open source feel to it. The download pages usually have huge technical links and history lists, programming resources and generally they are not user friendly unless youre a programmer, and even then not so much unless youre familier with the territory. In short, the **download interface** is not inviting enough and can even deter some people by giving it all a this is complex/serious feeling. - Find sites that give out RSS feeds - Yep. After going through all that crap up there, you still have not gotten to what you actually want news sources. Now you actually need to go out and proactively find RSS sources. There are some RSS directory sources out there, but its still hard to find them. Compare this with the built-in news group searching features found in all newsreaders and youre starting to see how this is a not so easy task for a newcomer. In fact, you actually need to know some sites you want to read **prior** to downloading an installing your news reader, or you wont find much use for it. Now, all the steps Ive outlined here are not very hard to do individually, and may even be relatively easy in the technical sense, but this does not mean **squat** when we try to compare the **usability** of this whole shebag to what todays users are accustomed to. It is **light years** behind. Its much like comparing linux to windows as far as ease of use vs. power is concerned. Youll find plenty of similarities in that field. Now, until we dont get all these things fixed, dont expect it to get better. ## More in Blogging [All posts in Blogging](https://osherove.com/blog/category/blogging) - Mar 29, 2004 ### [More Israeli bloggers!](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/29/more-israeli-bloggers.html) - Mar 19, 2004 ### [Is sharing information in a blog wrong for your company? An ethical dilemma](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/19/is-sharing-information-in-a-blog-wrong-for-your-company-an-e.html) - Mar 11, 2004 ### [1001 posts](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/11/1001-posts.html) - Feb 24, 2004 ### [.Net Rocks bullet points](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/2/24/net-rocks-bullet-points.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/