RSS can survive, the key in the content provider

With the closure of the Googlereader, RSS is a bit of a "geek" flavor of the technology and caused the critics of the hot debate. This is too professional and complex technology finally with the closure of the Greader to quit the stage of history; Many commentators think that Greader's exit has freed up opportunities and space for other RSS readers, and these greader have grown Buthen All blame the Greader experience to do too well, let the competitors can not get involved in competition.

I have had the privilege of working with RSS before and now for two or three years. But this kind of work needs not to be a direct user of the RSS reader, but to use RSS as a technical tool for exchanging and transferring information between websites. You guessed right by using RSS to collect information from other websites.

If it's a direct user of an RSS reader, I'm not in n years ago. There are several reasons why this is not necessary:

1. Information is complex.

I was working in the media about five years ago, and I needed to focus on a wide range of information in the industry, including the portal's associated channels and industry websites. When I put together the RSS lists of websites that I usually visit almost every day, and then go through them one by one, I found that I spent more time than I could go through the sites.

Shouldn't it be more convenient and more time-saving? The reason is that the Web site editor will be the most important content on the home page and the front, the Internet station just look at next pages and important columns page, you can grasp the focus of the day's content.

And with RSS to read, the output of the content on the one hand is not based on the importance of editing filter sorting, but by the time row; On the other hand, the output of the number of too many, no select, hundreds of days or even hundreds of have, information complex, no focus, see.

2. Incomplete content.

I remember when the RSS just fire up, the RSS output of each website, there is full text content and picture, can complete browsing, do not need to jump to the original page. But later, there is less RSS support for Full-text content, first of several major portals of each channel to basically stop the full text output; Then some industry vertical portals also output only dozens of words of the summary; later, even some blog platform to the well-known blog also made restrictions, only output summary; You go to a few big portals to visit a large number of well-known blogs, there are several support for full-text content output?

If the RSS light output title and abruptly intercept the first dozens of words in front of a simple summary, click to jump to the original page to view the full text, this and browse the website News list no difference, not necessarily how much convenience.

3, update is not timely.

RSS updates are slow or not updated, is a very annoying problem, once I missed some important information. Some Web sites with big updates and more regular updates, also can be found in time to update the exception of the situation, some updates are not large and not updated every day of the site, it is easy to ignore the update exception problem: You subscribe to the RSS did not update, that the site did not update, but in fact the site is updated, is the RSS service failed.

These two years and RSS deal more, found that some of the site's RSS content updates, change the address is often the case, the site's editors or technicians rarely pay attention to the RSS output every day, even if the error may have to wait for user complaints and feedback to repair.

In addition to RSS-provided web sites may fail, or deliberately delay the output, some RSS reader service platform may also fail to cause updates are not timely. Similar to the Greader service platform, itself has a storage server, will be in advance of the contents of each RSS list stored in their own server, the user access to actually read the RSS reader platform server content, and RSS content to provide the original site independent.

This platform service is more advanced than the browser's RSS plugin The latter has no storage platform, can only translate the RSS list of XML documents, beyond the scope of the RSS set of the past content can not be seen again, but the class Greader can, can look up the past content, which also added to the probability of the update error.

Above three, where is the source of the problem? In the RSS provider. The key to the solution is not in the hands of the RSS reader platform, but in the RSS content offering site. To enhance the user experience of the RSS reader, the site should do these three aspects of service improvement:

1, according to different needs, the output of different levels of selected content, rather than Shi;

2, RSS should provide full text content, simple summary can be intercepted by RSS reader;

3, the organization of Human maintenance Monitoring RSS service, failure to timely feedback to resolve, do not engage in delayed updates.

If so, what is the benefit of RSS content for Web sites?

1, can improve the website traffic? It doesn't look like it! Traffic is trapped by the RSS reader platform, and users are accessing their servers.

2, can bring advertising revenue? It doesn't seem to be possible! Google has launched the "AdSense RSS Feeds" service, so that RSS feed providers in the Feeds insert ads. But the effect? Ads generally placed in the bottom of the full text content, the effect can be imagined, the content has been read and who will care about advertising!

3, can bring popularity and influence? RSS reader platform is like a news portal, popularity and influence are occupied by the portal, content providers do not get anything.

4, can you charge? RSS technology itself is to promote information sharing platform, seemingly did not hear that there is a charge to provide the use of the function (if there is, welcome to correct), if the RSS technology to engage in a set of fee access mechanism, then why use RSS technology!

It is because the RSS content provides the website from the RSS reading this industry chain to become the pure content CP, does not have the traffic, does not have the popularity, causes them to lose the enthusiasm, the RSS becomes dispensable. If the full text output, but also may affect the site traffic, this folly is more and more people do!

RSS is not a Web site, users and platforms to win the three-party tool, not to be valued by the site, light platform and user attention and what use? Bricks! RSS reader platform to actively, can not win the mainstream content site support, just some professional small web sites and personal blog support, how to the popularity of the content? How to popularize the popularity of users?

"Leaves leave, is the pursuit of the wind or the tree does not retain?" No, it's time to fade!