I do appreciate Seth Godin's giving us amateurs another lesson in how to do RSS feeds. His instructions are pretty damn clear. But I have to admit, the whole process is still a little daunting. I do have a few feeds coming through on my Yahoo homepage, but I once tried to use, feedburner I think it was, and it was not very user friendly to me. I don't have a technical background but I learn real fast. I'm sure with more time and patience I will have it down cold. But I know that a lot of people are just not going to put the effort into it. It is an effort. For instance my Dad. He is a retired advertising entrepreneur with a lot of expertise in things like fly casting and fine wines. How cool would it be if he and Hugh McCleod could have a conversation? Or my friend Christine who moved here from Cameroon. She knows computers but I think it would be really hard to explain how to do RSS feeds.
So I issue a challenge to all you expert communicators/technophiles/change agents: find a way to make this RSS technology accessible to a more diverse demographic. Imagine the conversations we could have.
Bingo Betsy! The only way RSS is going to work is if we don’t know its there.
RSS needs to be 100% invisible. RSS needs to be baked inside every program on everyone’s computer. RSS must be seamless to reach the masses.
We shouldn’t have to use an add-on program and copy/paste geeky code to use it. It has to be simpler. RSS has to be just like many other computer applications of being super easy to use, we don’t even know we are using it.
Posted by: johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) | November 16, 2005 at 11:57 PM
Re RSS Smackdown, must admit been everywhere on the web reading about HOW TO ... RSS and you know what its gobbly gook to me, even after reading HOW TO in 8 different places. Linked through to Seth Godin and read it, and it filtered through, clear succinct and to the point. Great stuff, finally someone speaking the rest of the world language.
Posted by: Juilette Williams | November 17, 2005 at 06:26 PM