5 Jan 2010

Email Newsletter Subs Trump RSS - Study

An unsurprising study out of Hubspot this morning reveals that email subscribers to many blogs factor in 12x larger than those who read through RSS. I am not seeing this in my own stats however. Only 1.5% of you read site feed via email. Still, I keep thinking about where RSS reading is going these days. I love the technology but have begun to explore other opt

Borrowing a page from Matt Cutts, for January I am trying a 30-day challenge - to reduce my use of RSS. I am trying to only dip into Google Reader as a data warehouse. I am finding that email newsletters, Gmail filtering and Twitter lists/Listimonkey maybe all I need. It simplifies my streams.

Anybody else seeing a shift to email newsletters? E-marketer reports that companies are increasingly integrating email and social media.

21 Dec 2009

As the Decade Closes, Has RSS Faded Too?


The decade is coming to an end. And with it, so has the era of feeds too faded - though you can argue it never got off the ground. Even with real-time technologies like pubsubhubbub, RSS today feels slow and it's clear its best days are behind it. Feed reading, like blogging, feels "very 2005." I wasn't convinced until recently, however.

Until a few weeks ago, this die-hard techie was clinging to Google Reader like a disco maniac might his eight-tracks. I felt like the last hold out; the guy still dancing to the Bee Gees when everyone else had gone punk - and maybe I was. 

Now, however, slowly but surely I am moving more of my consumption out of RSS and into the Twitter stream. Twitter, not blogs, long ago became the focal point for reading and conversing around news for many. So it's natural, as this report on Read Write Web indicates, that most of us who were even using RSS readers to begin with have ditched them and have moved to tracking news in the stream instead. And we're not alone. According to Forrester, eight percent of US online adults post and read updates on Twitter at least monthly.

Personally, this is something I resisted for three reasons: a) I like full text feeds, b) there was a lack of organization/lists and c) Twitter remains very dependent on "now," making saving and digesting information at a later date in a Tivo-like way all the more difficult. That all changed with the advent of Twitter lists. 

Nowadays I am bringing it all into Gmail, which other than my corporate email account is my sole productivity and social Ginsu Knife. I already publish to my Posterous-powered lifestream site via email. Couple that with Twitgether, a full-blown real-time Gmail Twitter client, NutshellMail for tracking social network interactions like replies and Listimonkey to bring me Twitter lists every hour via email (pictured above), my Google Reader is starting to get lonely.

How about you? Are there any die-hard RSS users out there who have not succumb to the stream?
12 Oct 2009

Study: Streams and Feeds are a Mess

Jakob Nielsen studies the usability of RSS feeds and social network streams for professionals and finds that ...

"Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks."

Some of this is easily fixable, however ...

"As the satisfaction ratings indicate, we have a long way to go to improve the usability of social network messaging and RSS feeds.

The problems start with something as simple as the choice of username. For example, the United States Department of Education's Twitter ID was 'usedgov,' which sounded to users like 'used government' and was off-putting. Logos were often bad as well, particularly in the small rendering that some services offer. Users depend on the ability to scan down a stream to pick out logos and user names, but this basic need was often thwarted."

This is why email in business isn't dying anytime soon. For consumers, however, things might be different.

1 Oct 2009

Google Wave 1.0 = RSS, the Sequel. In Other Words, DoA... for Now

You can't spend any time on Twitter without geeks lusting after Google Wave. Here's my quick take...it has as much chance catching on as RSS did.

I have had a Google Wave sandbox account since late July. It's slick to be sure. However, what I keep asking myself is this: what problem does it solve? In many ways it's overly complex. In fact it's too complex for the era of the Attention Crash where all of us, especially knowledge workers, are crying for simplicity.

Could it be an amazing enterprise collaboration tool? Sure, maybe. Could it be a Twitter, Facebook or email killer for consumers or a cure for cancer? I doubt it. 

Wave requires a new way of thinking. Sure, we're capable of it as humans. But as Mike Elgan, Anil Dash and Scoble wisely assess, Wave maybe ahead of its time. We like linearity. We need more tools that, as Jeff Jarvis has written, offer elegant organization - as Facebook and Google do. Wave does not - at least yet. It doesn't solve problems. If three of the geekiest geeks I know are not over the moon about it, then how will anyone else be?

Wave may stall the same way RSS unfortunately did. RSS is one of the greatest Internet innovations of the last decade (thank you Dave!). So why did it never take off with consumers? Simple. It didn't solve problems that many people have. It only solved problems that some, eg info junkies, had. And it required a new way of thinking and operating. (I would argue the entire concepts of feeds only took off once Twitter and Facebook simplified it.)

But what about Gmail you say? Gmail too was a complex beast when it debuted with its conversation views and interface -  and it caught on. Yes, but Gmail was different. It solved problems: mail storage quotas and killer search. Thus people were willing to make the investment to master it.

So definitely get excited about Wave. It is way cool. It is real time - where the world is going. But, for now, it does create more problems than it solves. Let's see if Wave 2.0 fixes that.
12 Sep 2009

Translation Technology Can Open Your Eyes to a Global Social Web

As more of us around the world join the web, a lot content is going to start to be produced in non-English languages. This hasn't been a factor for a lot of us, but I suspect it will as we begin to discover content-rich resources and individuals we want to interact with. 

Case in point. Recently I started reading a German blog that covers technology. It has a lot rich content, like for example the latest build of a portable version of Google Chrome - but it's all in German.

I was delighted to discover that not only can Google Reader translate RSS but it remembers this setting on a feed-by-feed basis. Even though the translation is Yoda-like it's incredibly handy and is opening up my eyes to new voices. I hope that the big social networks like Twitter and Facebook can one day follow suit.
Next

Steve Rubel's Posterous

Steve Rubel (bio) is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman - the world's largest independent PR firm.

He is charged with helping clients identify emerging technologies and trends that can be applied in marketing communications programs. Rubel also explores these topics on his site and in monthly columns for Forbes.com and Advertising Age. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook as well.

Steve can be reached via email at steverubel@gmail.com.

Note: Everything posted on this site is Steve's personal opinion. It does not represent the views of Edelman or its clients.

Search

Listing RSS

Obox Design