To pick on the field rather than on a single player, I’m going go on record with a sweeping generalization: RSS readers suck. They shouldn’t. There are only three fundamental things an RSS reader needs to do really well:
Display - users need to be able to read posts.
Organize - users need to be able to isolate, prioritize, group, and/or mix/aggregate sources.
Limit - users need to be able to filter or discover posts by tag, keyword or phrase.
Every reader I’m even remotely familiar with (read: every RSS reader on the market) does a terrible job dealing with content overload - they lack the ability to organize and limit content delivery.
I made a comment about digesting content from certain blogs being akin to drinking from a firehose when we introduced Feed Rinse. And since a reader allows users to subscribe to multiple firehoses, that reader needs to be able to filter.
Readers also need to allow users to organize. I have more than 120 subscriptions on any given day. I want a group for web. I want a group for local news. I want a group for upcoming conferences. I want a group for architecture. I want a group for Paris Hilton. Okay, that last one isn’t true, but if I wanted it, I would want my reader to allow it.
To a lesser degree, I also want my reader to allow me to discover posts on specific topics. This is basically include vs block filtering, and in most cases, running a search feed at Technorati is the better way to go. But as my base of subscriptions grows, I need to set up channels that discover posts only on predictive analysis in email marketing for instance. Doing this in my reader allows me to determine blog authority rather than become exposed to any key phrase match within the 57 million blogs that Technorati tracks.
The topic of notification might be up for debate. Personally, I don’t need my reader to notify me about specific post content - I don’t blog about time sensitive info, and my support alerts are handled in other ways. This may change over time, but, IMO, the notification need is sufficiently served outside of the reader. If you want to know more about bouncing alerts/notifications out of RSS, I’ll defer to Marshall Kirkpatrick and a recent post he launched shortly after decompressing from his writing gig at TechCrunch.
I’d love to add “translate” to the list of onboard functions of a reader, but I think translation services are not tight enough yet.
That’s it. If I didn’t mention it, my RSS reader doesn’t need to do it - I don’t need to tag, flag, bookmark, translate, rate, vote, comment, share, store, save, or search within my reader. Technorati, de.licio.us, digg, and google offer far more logical methods for all of these.
So, to recap, a reader that doesn’t suck needs to allow me to:
1. Read (display)
2. Group, Read (organize, display)
3. Mix/Aggregate, Read (organize, display)
4. Filter, Read (limit, display)
5. Group, Filter, Read (organize, limit, display)
6. Mix/Aggregate, Filter, Read (organize, limit, display)
7. Mix, Filter, Read (organize, limit, display)
8. Discover, Read (limit, display)
9. Discover, Notify? (limit, display)
And Richard MacManus will tell you it needs to do it without relying on any outside services (related post here.)
I’ll be posting more on the topic soon, but I’d love to get some feedback from other RSS junkies. Am I missing anything?
By the way, if you’re looking for consultants on the topic of RSS, Marshall and Richard are both incredible sources. Each can be contacted through their websites. As a final disclaimer, I use the RSS acronym as a generalization for all XML feed specifications.
