RSS boom: When it is no longer RSS

There have been several recent events in the RSS field. One is that Google continues to expand its pace to 100 million dollars to swallow a professional RSS seed Encapsulation website feedburner.com. Another is the domestic RSS browser gougou.com attributed to the popular download software Thunderbolt's.

Both of these things are part of the case where the RSS site was annexed. My consistent view is that the annexation of a website means that a sense of commercial value cannot exist independently. The trend of two other websites in China also shows the bitterness of the commercialization of RSS sites. One is the shrimp-catching channel, and there are comments that its venture capital depletion has forced it to shift to increased traffic. The other is Feedsky.com's "topic advertisement". I still can't understand how blogging makes a difference between writing a soft article and RSS seed encapsulation. After all, feedsky.com to FeedBurner.com's Chinese version of the image.

From a more bizarre point of view, RSS reading is a bit like email. I subscribe to a blog, if it is updated, then my RSS browser (whether Web or client-style) like a mail system (whether the Web-type or client-side), the same as received the "letter." This is a weird angle, but it's easier to understand for a lot of network novice users. Oh, RSS, is to receive mail ah.

However, sending and receiving mail is also a kind of "technical work" for client software. Setting up pop and SMTP addresses is not for everyone. However, the web-mail system solves this problem. You can use the mail system as long as you sign in and sign in. As a result, the mail is relatively low in technical barriers.

And RSS is obviously not the case. If it wasn't for RSS browsing, RSS would have little meaning. For a network novice, whether it's a client or a Web RSS browser, finding the so-called XML seed is a bit embarrassing.

Every person who has access to the Internet will actually be exposed to HTTP. One of the basic protocols of the entire Internet world is HTTP. But I can say with certainty that 90% of people don't know what HTTP is. But it is also certain that, even if you have never heard of HTTP, surfing the Internet will not be an obstacle.

The problem with RSS is here. I've never heard of RSS being unable to use RSS, which seems to me to be a more personalized service. Although not very informative data support, but I believe that the Sina people are still crawling to the Sina page to see the news every day, rather than through RSS to subscribe to Sina's news. Not unwilling to do that, but not at all.

The second problem with RSS is that there is little demand. Gougou.com once opened the Hongbo subscription, I noticed that this it eldest brother has nearly million blog subscriptions. RSS feeds can solve his ongoing blog to see if there are any updates to the annoyance. But this is clearly not the norm. The need for RSS subscriptions is not big for most people: look at that guy's blog? Go online to see Bai, why RSS Subscription.

RSS feeds are for people who have huge blog reading needs. This is a tiny niche market. In the Chinese world, I have reason to believe that the core user figures for today's market will not be more than million equivalents. Moreover, this small market, there are so many with RSS browsing related business organizations in the fight.

Therefore, RSS is a direct user-oriented commercial path (which I call the product) will be long and arduous. The best way to commercialize RSS is, in my opinion, a tool, not a product. The use of RSS to launch some services, which are not focused on the "subscription" concept.

I personally highly recommend RSS technology. Because there are only two things on the Internet: people, or content. RSS can get through any one content platform. With the aid of RSS, I can integrate a Sina, NetEase, Sohu three big portal all content of another portal (of course, nothing much meaning). RSS is the best tool if you want to do a Cross-platform content consolidation page.

Perhaps, the shrimp is indeed under some pressure of investors forced to change to the content and flow development. But I think there is nothing wrong with this transformation. Catch Shrimp RSS Subscriptions service, will not see any explosive growth in the short term, while content integration services, the future can be. This content platform, even for network novice users, there is no technical threshold. He/she doesn't need to know about the existence of RSS, just, it might be a little confusing: from the shrimp-catching page, suddenly jumped to a completely different style blog page.

Just as HTTP cannot be commercialized directly, making RSS subscriptions, in the present sense, is less meaningful than using RSS to do something.