5 Reasons Why RSS Feeds are Not Popular

Only geeks use RSS feeds. Is this true? Unfortunatly yes. Why? well because like most things in web technology and computers only geeks can understand that nothing is one hundred percent all the time. There are probably 5 reasons that the average internet user does not know about or trust RSS feeds.

RSS is still unknown

RSS feeds fail frequently

RSS Feeds are sensitive

Feeds that have been removed

A notification service is needed

RSS feeds are becoming more and more important because of the importance that website owners place on them not because visitors think they are needed. Dreamhost.com has recently replaced their newsletter notification with an RSS feed. While I appreciate the convenience of a having a feed. I don't think that it is a good replacement for a newsletter.

To the average website visitor RSS feeds seem to be a geek toy requiring knowledge that they don't have time to gain or just are are not interested in. If web browsers included feed readers by default it would probably increase RSS usage 10 fold. But since none of the web browser makers seem to be interested in trying to do this RSS may remain unkown and unpopular for years to come.

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