Some thoughts on RSS
Before reading We the Media, I didn't know what RSS was. It piqued my interest, so I decided to start using it. It's such a simple idea, but it really simplifies the information-collecting process. I ran into a few problems using it so I did a quick google search to see what others thought about it's usability at this point. What I found wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but they were two interesting articles on some of the potential implications of this relatively new form.
The first article I found had to do with the benefits of using summaries rather than full text articles in feeds. The author believes that full text eliminates the conversational aspect of a blog and leads to fewer response posts. If this is the case, then contrary to Dan Gillmor's belief, RSS feeds would not be adding to the democritization of journalism. I suppose the question becomes the source of the feed. If it is still "amateur" media, then this new distribution method empowers the average citizen. However, if it is from a Big Media source, RSS could hurt the bottom-up model that may be springing up through blogs at these sites. Also, the reduced number of hits that a blog recieves due to full-text feeds creates problems for paid-for ads found on the page. This is interesting as a parallel to the problem 30 second spots are having due to Tivo. His third argument has to do with receiving credit for your work. Apparently, there are certain readers that automatically reformat multiple feeds into an html document, making it incredibly easy for a reader to post it as his own work. Finally, the author points to the problem of RSS hogging bandwidth, which brings me to another article I found at Wired.
RSS feeds are relatively new to the internet and aren't used by the average user as a result. This article suggests the possibility that if it were to become as ubiquitous as email or instant messaging, the traffic it creates could clog the internet. The problem is rooted in the fact that many readers check for updates multiple times every hour. Comparatively, few internet users check a news site more than once a day. If everyone who uses email were subscribing to multiple RSS feeds, the extra traffic created could seemingly cause problems. Already, some of the more popular feeds have had server issues from traffic overload. The question the article poses is whether or not the internet is at a stage at which it can grow to handle this additional traffic. I can't really think of anything big that has hit the internet that didn't make it due solely to bandwidth limitations. It seems that whether it's from the hardware or software side, it has scaled to facilitate any new medium that has come along. Already, this article suggests a few simple ways to reduce the bandwidth needed such as removing large mainpage images (although this leads to the advertisement problem from above) or standardizing RSS readers to check feeds less frequently.
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