Jacob Nielsen: what about RSS?

re: Jacob Nielsen: what about RSS?

Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 09:02:37 GMT

So far, I find RSS a nightmare.

I can't get any decent search agents to work properly.

I'm a Jakob Nielsenite web usability blogologist, and I'm pretty frustrated with low usability of RSS and aggregators.

PubSub is doing nearly nothing for me, missing many items.

Subscriptions to my Feedburner feeds fluctuate up and down in quantity. At first I thought it was tied to my content: anger someone with a post they dislike, unsubscribe.

Now a couple subscribers tell me they get "URL not available message". Maybe that's how I'm losing subscribers, and thus, credibility.

This is why it's a nightmare. I cannot lose cred, my blogs are all about cred.

ugh.

My posts always contain 150 kb digital art images, so I cannot provide "full text, entire post" subscriptions, can I?

RSS? Right now, I think it sucks.

:^(

re: Jacob Nielsen: what about RSS?

overthink — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 20:33:50 GMT

Wow, the usability of RSS, interesting...

...not.

There are plenty of people who still don't know how to make a web site, format a plain text OR an HTML email, or figure out where a file goes when they save it on their computer.

Because these same people can't understand RSS and Newsreaders, it is somehow "not usable?"

Whatever, how about this. Some people are dumb. Whether they're trained by Jakob Nielsen, or not.

I don't even use a News reader, but I still use RSS feeds when BUILDING sites. RSS fulfills a promise of standardized communication between web sites. This is what syndication is for... it's not so blog readers can be made aware of each new post, that is just as easily done with a web browser (I do it every day.)

The second S in RSS is what's important.

I would hate to think that RSS is going to be judged on whether it's easy to CREATE a feed with some bozo's blog software, or whether it is easy to use a News Reader.

If I'm missing the point of this article, I apologize, this just strikes me as weird.

re: Jacob Nielsen: what about RSS?

alexbarn — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 23:39:53 GMT

'Overthink'...thanks for the comments...you say:

"There are plenty of people who still don't know how to make a web site, format a plain text OR an HTML email, or figure out where a file goes when they save it on their computer."

...But surely that is what usability is about...making computing really, really easy...? That's a good thing right?

"Because these same people can't understand RSS and Newsreaders, it is somehow "not usable?""

...You're comparing apples to oranges here. Just because someone doesn't know how to make a website (probably around 99.9% of the world's population) doesn't mean they are incapable of learning an RSS application.

"Whatever, how about this. Some people are dumb. Whether they're trained by Jakob Nielsen, or not. "

...The people Jacob trains are generally in the website desgin/interface design industry...he doesn't train the users...!

"I would hate to think that RSS is going to be judged on whether it's easy to CREATE a feed with some bozo's blog software, or whether it is easy to use a News Reader."

"If I'm missing the point of this article, I apologize, this just strikes me as weird."

...With all due respect 'overthink', I believe you have entirely missed the point. The usability target audience at question here is not those who use RSS to syndicate out content (site managers devleopers, webmonkeys, bloggers), but those who want to consume RSS. The Jeffrey Vreen post I point to above is an example of what I mean.

re: Jacob Nielsen: what about RSS?

Alan Howshall — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 13:27:57 GMT

As a newcomer to daily use of RSS I've actually sidesteped the whole issue and got the best of both worlds...RSS within Outlook as news item posts, which I can get notification on new, read, delete or keep and all within same normal app as my email.

One that works for me is free www.rsspopper.com

re: Jacob Nielsen: what about RSS?

Adrian Lee — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 18:01:50 GMT

I tend to disagree with Nielsen. Personally, I clearly segregate e-mail (communication) and content (information), with a slight overlap. But I just think that mixing the two into one interface is just a horrible ideal. I've got more than enough problems with noise in my inbox (even the unread "RSS" mails is noise to me), and I firmly believe that, like the gadget world, we are going to see a divergence of applications for specific functions (like e-mail vs. RSS for instace), instead of having convergence (e-mail as the panacea).

Mobile phones (esp. SMS) were drastically more complex interfaces to learn. Just see where that went!

re: Jacob Nielsen: what about RSS?

Percy — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 18:10:10 GMT

Once you get the hang of RSS (and I think that this doesn't take too long), it's so much better than visiting a blog or a website. It's so much more convenient that without my RSS feeds I kinda feel lost. It's almost like using POP in your mail client to check your web-based mail. Setting it up might require you to get a bit technical, but once you do it, consolidating your email becomes much easier.

Right now, I think that RSS is still a little geeky, in that you have to do some geeky things to figure out feeds, etc. However, the concept itself is so convenient that you can't help but tell others about it. I feel that it's a matter of time before RSS becomes something everyone starts to use.

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