RSS - just how popular is it?
I wrote the article below for the TechNet newsletter this week and I've been amazed at the huge response I've had to the article. I've decided to reproduce it here to see if blog readers have the same thoughts about RSS than those who read the TechNet newsletter...
I tend to forget about how much I use technology. Sometimes I’m surprised that everyone also isn’t using the latest and greatest features / widgets / applications / tools etc. Whenever I present at TechNet sessions, I usually ask people how they heard about the session. Usually over 90% had had the TechNet newsletter forwarded on to them by a friend, hardly anyone looks at our web site (where the events are advertised) and usually only one or two people in the audience get the information from a blog like mine. So it seems from my very unscientific poll, is that people prefer to have information “pushed” to them. So I started to think about RSS feeds.
Whenever I ask about RSS, I get polarised responses. 50% of people I ask have never heard of it (even if I ask people who work for Microsoft). Some have pressed the orange XML button on a web page, received a screen of gibberish (XML), panicked, and backed off, never to return. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and, put simply, allows you to have a web page delivered to your local RSS reader. With the availability of IE7, things have become so much easier. In IE7, all you have to do is push the orange icon on the right of the toolbar, elect to syndicate the site, and your content is pushed down to your browser whenever an update occurs. Really Simply.
So I wondered, If 90% of attendees at TechNet events hear about the event via an email sent to them, we could put an RSS button on the TechNet events page, and you could elect to receive alerts whenever we posted a new event to the site. The information would still be pushed to you, you’d be automatically notified of any new events, your friends could stop forwarding you mail, and you’d be always up to date. What do you think? Let me know, so I can hassle Phil and get the RSS button onto the TechNet page.