Feeds

E-mail is fantastically popular and probably the most widely used internet technology. Even the generations outside the traditional scope of the internet explosion seem to grasp the concept. I think the reasons for its growth are two fold. Firstly the direct benefits to communication in the workplace saw it quickly adopted en masse and introduced into employees’ daily lives. Secondly the growth of web-based clients, such as Hotmail, in the late 90’s brought the benefits to the social realm, all wrapped up in an accessible interface. All of this is wrapped up with an elegant name. Electronic Mail is an analogy that most people quickly comprehended by glueing together their experience of the regular mail system along with telegrams and the telephone.

The above introduction already starts to list the reasons why feeds haven’t achieved the same degree of ubiquity. They are sadly still lingering around the fringes of ‘geek territory’ and still fail the explain-this-to-your-parents test. Feed, RSS, XML, Atom, aggregate and syndicate are all terms that do nothing to demonstrate the frighteningly simple concept.

The feed analogy should be as easy to grasp as electronic mail. For those of you still confused by the technology: a web feed is essentially being told about new information in a timely manner within the comfort of your own ‘home’.

We can consider browsing a list of bookmarked websites each day, to be analogous with routinely visiting several shops to see if they have what you want. The fresh milk or new jumper might not be in stock for days, but we have no way of knowing and so must keep checking back. Sometimes we are successful, other times we are not, but the effort is always the same.

In this same world, feeds are much like hand-delivered parcels. We’ve told the shopkeepers what we’d like and so the items are packaged up and sent directly to our door when ready. If receiving an e-mail should be like receiving a personal postcard from a friend, then receiving a feed is having magazines or goods delivered. An e-mail client will receive the former, and a feed reader the latter.

E-mail is of course heavily abused these days. It’s used for many impersonal tasks such as content mail-outs, update notifications, status notifications, etc. In fact it’s precisely because e-mail is so widely adopted that it’s become the landing ground for all these things. E-mail is now like a ringing phone constantly demanding attention.

If having a newspaper delivered to your door sounds preferable to trudging to the newsagents every day, or even having the journalist call you up every time there’s a new story then maybe feeds are for you.

This video is an excellent introduction: