What will RSS look like for regular people?

I guess if I could answer that question I should be a venture capitalist or entrepreneur. Failing that, maybe I’ll just ramble about it for a bit on my blog.

Let’s go with option #2.

As of now, RSS and feed technology is still the domain of alpha-geeks and early adopters. But, like e-mail and web browsing, eventually the Average Joe will understand what an RSS feed is. I’m thinking that day will be sometime right around when their PC will be able to manage RSS feeds out-of-the-box. Today, you’ve got to download additional software. In other words, it ain’t happenin’ today.

This topic popped into my head a few days ago with the release of the Internet Explorer 7 beta. (Even if you hate IE and/or Windows I’d flip through the screenshots to see how the other half will be living.) IE7 features some level of built-in RSS functionality, and this will likely be the introduction to that technology for many millions of people.

But, what should RSS look like for regular folks? I think this is an interesting question, and one that’s surprisingly tricky to answer. In an attempt to gain some insight, I’ve experimented with a variety of newsreaders in the past few days.

Safari

When I first saw it, I ignored it, but I have to say Safari’s RSS reader pleasantly surprised me after giving it a chance. Feeds are handled as a special kind of bookmark, and Safari shows your unread items in the Bookmarks menu. I’d almost say it’s 100% mom-ready, if not for the following quirk: Safari draws a distinction between simply viewing a feed and subscribing to it. When you click the blue RSS button in Safari’s address bar, it loads the feed and displays the articles in a nice, clean format. But, you have to click the “Add Bookmark” link to actually subscribe to the feed.

I think this is slightly awkward…essentially, the user just sees another view of what they were already looking at on the web and it’s not clear what to do from there. When users get up-to-speed a bit more on what feeds are all about, they will be clicking the RSS icon because they want to subscribe. After all, if you have another app set as your Default RSS Reader, clicking that icon loads the feed into your reader and offically subscribes you. But, on the other hand, casual users may be confused if the bookmarks were added automatically. In general, I agree that “just making it an option on the Preferences screen” is lazy UI design, but in this case I think it would be good to have some kind of “Auto-bookmark when I click the RSS icon” checkbox.

All this being said, I would still recommend Safari as a newsreader for the Regular Guy.

Ripoffs of this idea

From what I’ve seen, both Flock and IE7 take a similar approach to integrating RSS into a browser. This is not that bad, overall. It’s nice for casual browsing and you can always graduate to an industrial-strength newsreader like NetNewsWire (which rocks, by the way).

I actually kinda like Flock, or rather, I like where Flock is headed. Since so many people use Flickr, del.icio.us, and other such tools it makes sense to integrate those things into the browser. Unfortunately, Flock is so crash-tastic on the Mac that I have trouble running it at all.

RSS as e-mail

Most of the established newsreaders have an e-mail client-like vibe to them, in that the different feeds you subscribe to are like different e-mail accounts, and unread items look like new messages. Some solutions actually integrate into your existing e-mail client, with Outlook being the most popular choice.

I like this style less and less as time goes on…keeping up with e-mail is such a chore that I’m reluctant to burden myself additionally. My gut tells me that less savvy users will feel similarly. The main thing that this metaphor has going for it is that people already understand what e-mail is. But, people can learn new things, and I think this is less of an advantage than some might think it is.

None of the above

This is actually the category that I’m most excited about, because feed technology can be about so much more than just updates to your favorite web site. Podcasts are the obvious example, and some applications update themselves through RSS. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

I’m hopeful that the market will be flooded with interesting readers of all shapes and sizes. I’m still looking for a small newsreader I can keep open all the time for “critical” feeds. Imagine if your computer posted to a feed when you’re running low on disk space. A big, complex newsreader just isn’t right for this.

Now is when I sit back and wait for the innovative products to magically appear.