- You don’t value the feeds in your reader
- The feeds you’re subscribed to don’t meet your needs
- You prefer to get information another way. It’s okay to surf in the age of RSS…really. It’s even okay to prefer e-mail subscriptions.
- You may not have the skills, time, patience, etc. to find what you need.
- Needed feeds may not exist…though that’s increasingly unlikely
- You don’t like to read on-line
There are others, certainly. I keep running into feed overload/intimidation syndrome and I really don’t think it’s the fault of the technology. I’m tired of hearing that RSS readers are a burden. If you know what you value and the information you need, then RSS readers are a huge time-saver and productivity tool. If you don’t know what you expect from the wave of information on the web, then RSS won’t improve your situation.
My two cents on a Friday. Have a nice weekend!
It’s like TiVo. Tell it what you want, and you never miss a thing. That’s great. Go on vacation for a week, and you have some catching up to do! If time is tight, “enjoying” subscriptions may mean losing sleep.
That’s the overload. There’s just plain more stuff that I’d like to read than there are hours in which to read it.
But this will always be true. There will always, always be too much stuff to read, see, listen to on the web. The problem will only grow.
My point is that the technology doesn’t make the stuff, and it’s not to blame if you don’t or can’t keep up.
I’m fighting the arguement in my organization that RSS overwhelms people. I think people didn’t realize there was so much out there and are surprised by it and don’t have any mechanisms to deal with it.
I agree. RSS doesn’t create the problem; it just helps bring it into focus.
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