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Begrudingly Adding RSS
Jan 2008
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You might be surprised to hear that I regularly wait on adopting new technology for years.
I don't own an iPod or a smartphone, and I read the Sunday paper in print. So it is with
a wistful shudder that I am finally adding a new feature to this website: support for a
technology called RSS—Really Simple Syndication.
With great sorrow, I admit defeat. RSS has won.
The Adoption Curve and Other Fantasies
Any product manager will proudly explain that technology hits the marketplace in a big,
smooth wave. When a product is new, only hobbyists and enthusiasts will risk a purchase. Once
time passes, the mass market takes notice, and the thingamajig begins fly off the shelves.
Eventually, those crotchety late adopters finally admit that you've got a pretty neat little gadget
and they angrily open their wallets. Here it is as a curve:
The Rogers adoption curve. Also applicable to anything else that
involves drudgery, stubbornness, and eventual submission.
But those product managers are confused by the data. This isn't the adoption curve. It's a visual
description of how human beings withstand torture. Some people give in right away, others hold
out to the end, but most succumb in the middle. Adopting most any new technology requires suffering,
and customers tend to differ only on how long they are able to endure.
Painful Technology and Brandon’s Rule
Although not everything is difficult to use at first, few new products ship without an instruction
manual and a cadre of behind-the-scenes telephone support operators. You can often predict the precise
level of frustration in advance by applying Brandon’s Rule: "If it's on the outside, it's probably not
on the inside." The more the packaging touts life-altering features and miraculous results, the greater the
odds the item will reside unused in your basement for all eternity. Be wary of politicians, employers and
new technologies who make big promises. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
RSS Isn't Really Simple Syndication
If you believe in Brandon's Rule, a technology whose name is two-thirds reassurance will make you
wish you had a few extra eyebrows to raise. Just calling it "Syndication" would have been sufficient
and potentially accurate. Insisting that it is simple—pardon me, really simple—is a
clear warning that it isn't.
In fact, not only is RSS not simple, it's not even syndication! That term implies authoring, distribution
and publishing. A syndicated newspaper comic strip, for example, is one that is produced locally and then
sent out to various outlets for printing in their respective periodicals. Like the dusty hometown pizza joint
who refuses to hire drivers, RSS doesn't actually distribute anything. RSS just makes content available.
Going to get it is still your responsibility.
Feeders, Readers and Aggregators, Oh My!
The unnecessary complexity of a new technology is most evident in the ridiculous terminology. Although really,
a particular source of content published via RSS is actually just a link to a web page, it's usually
called a feed, and a collection of such web pages is managed by a feeder. Don't be fooled
into thinking there is some fantastic new mechanism shuffling content about the Internet like pneumatic shuttles
in a series of tubes—feeds are just web links; feeders are just web servers.
An RSS aggregator, however, is a truly innovative work of genius. It's not just a web link, it's actually a whole
collection of feeds (web links) that you get to manage. Kind of exactly like bookmarks. So perhaps, not that
revolutionary.
I don't know how this helps, but it's true that RSS aggregators come standard with a feature that you probably
didn't know was already part of bookmarks: synchronization. Your browser can automatically download all of your
favorite websites on a regular schedule. RSS aggregators just have this switch set to on by default.
This screenshot is somewhat recent, but only because I was too lazy to dig up a version of Internet Explorer 4 from 1997.
Yes, bookmark synchronization was available
back in the dark ages.
More Work for Everyone
If you want to take advantage of the dazzling new world of RSS, which I am desperately imploring you not to do,
there's a modicum of torture in your future. You have to trudge through the hundreds of available RSS aggregators
to find the one that is the least broken in the most annoying areas. You have to visit all your favorite websites
and attempt to find available RSS feeds, if they exist, and key them into your new aggregator. And then you need to change your entire methodology of surfing the web, because it's likely that web pages shoved through an RSS feed won't look or operate they way they do normally.
If you're in the small community of people who need to create RSS feeds, consider picking up an advance
copy of Waterboarding for Dummies. In addition to all the usual work of testing your standards-compliant web
pages in all those almost-but-not-quite-standards-compliant-browsers, you now must check your RSS feeds in as
many RSS aggregators as you care to endure. You need to coordinate with a litany of startup companies, none of
which will really matter, in properly listing and cross-referencing your feed in their directories. You must
engage in mortal battle with other Internet unpleasantries that have invaded RSS, including spam, advertising,
and security vulnerabilities. RSS is grim.
Emerging from the Beating
I have admitted defeat in my one-man war against RSS. Enough of those bleeding-edge, early-adopter,
hobby-enthusiast readers have baited me into adding the feature. I've quietly added the misleading but
universal syndication icon 
to
my website. The service is there for those that can't help themselves. Those
who don't notice this mostly invisible change will be the lucky ones.
Here's the advice you won't get anywhere else: I've got an RSS feed, but I'm begging you, don't use it.
RSS is tragically immature technology, patched over with a few platitudes to make the acronym a full three
letters, and shall inflict upon you untold suffering. Save yourself. Go outside, spend time with your
loved ones. This technology is still torture.
Further Reading:
Would you like to leave a comment?
Read this.
###
In his tragically seminal 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations, researcher
Everett Rogers coined the term "early adopter" and inadvertently launched a field
of copycat innovation "experts". Now it seems everybody follows their bad advice
and designs for hobbyists, as this
"The Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big
truck. It's, it's a 
