How People Really Use RSS – Part One

In a couple of recent blog posts, we asked users how they employ RSS in their everyday lives. We got some great responses and good suggestions, and we thank everyone who took the time to tell us their stories.

We certainly learned something from respondents, and now it’s time to share some of the answers and suggestions we received.

Melissa Guzzetta writes that she didn’t really understand what all the RSS buzz was all about until she sat down and studied it. “It is perfect for someone with a particular interest in a topic and wants to stay on top of more articles and postings about the topic subscribed to. All organized in one place. I have learned so much about blogging and other topics of interest since I got started – I want to go out and show others how to do the same thing!”

Walter Basil says that he uses RSS “instead of going to all the different websites (35 in all) on an hourly basis to see if there is any new information for me to digest … Viewing them all as RSS items in NetNewsWire keeps the busy ones coming to me while not letting me forget the ‘smaller’ ones that I would like to keep tabs on but would forget about due the length of time in between posts.”

The most useful feature for Basil is NewsGator Go!, which he uses to track feeds while away from his computer. “Until the iPhone, I frequently used the regular web version while at work, which meant I only viewed my RSS feeds during work hours and while at home, he writes. “Without it, I would spend much less time on my iPhone. Because of the iPhone version of Newsgator, I am able to view my feeds whenever I have the time. At line in Costco. Waiting for some new tires. Waiting while the wife picks out what shirt she wants to buy. The options are limitless!”

The feature Basil finds least helpful is the difficulty in deleting clippings. “I wish I could delete clippings from a button on the toolbar of NetNewsWire, or through a keyboard shortcut,” he writes. “The current way is just not user-friendly. Great for the web version, just not so intuitive on the client.” (NetNewsWire honcho Brent Simmons says that in the current NNW beta, you can delete clippings using the delete key.)

Paul Beard writes that he uses RSS whenever it is offered. “I keep track of library books, both checked out and ones I have requested, with RSS. I monitor message boards that support RSS updates. And the usual websites and mailing lists, of course.“

Beard would like to see more high-quality feeds. “I have some feeds that just have titles, no content, kind of useless. And most feeds offered by Blogger have post titles of 'Untitled' no matter what the content says.” And he asks a good question: “How do we push back on the publishers and let them know what they're missing?"

The unifying factor in each of these stories seems to be that RSS helps make sense of the surfeit of information each of us encounters today. I’ll continue to share more user ideas in coming posts. If you use RSS for something other than any of the above, send us your story: newsgatortales@newsgator.com. Featured participants get their choice of NewsGator products like FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, NewsGator Inbox and NewsGator Premium.

Happy surfing.