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Posted via web from Lee Kraus

Posted via web from Lee Kraus

Posted via web from Lee's posterous

My conclusions in the previous post still stand: 1) Google now dominates what's left of the RSS Reader market; and 2) RSS reading is a very fragmented experience circa 2009/2010 due to Twitter, Facebook, start pages like Netvibes, Firefox bookmarks, and more. However, a lot of commenters wrote that they still use RSS Readers each and every day. Here are the main reasons why:

1. Control over Information Flow

RSS Readers allow users to control their flow of information, whereas it's impossible to keep up with the Twitter firehose of real-time information. Mathew Ballad (comment 11) put it well:

"I tend to check Google Reader multiple times a day. While I do keep up with bigger news through Friendfeed or Twitter, I like to keep up with multiple Graphic Design blogs, tech blogs, entertainment blogs, photography blogs and Apple blogs on my own. I just can't see myself ditching RSS Readers for something that I really don't have much control over."

It's not just about controlling your stream of daily news. Many people have feeds that they just don't want to miss. Tim Bray has a folder of feeds in NetNewsWire that he feels is "unacceptable when I don't at least glance at everything those people have to say."

Some people would argue that it's a thankless task trying to control your RSS Reader. I am one of those people and I long ago gave up trying to keep my 'unread' count at zero. Indeed nowadays I don't even try to mark as 'read' my email - using Gmail, I just let it all flow in and mark the ones I should reply to with stars.

On a similar point, RSS pioneer Dave Winer remarked (comment 80) that Google Reader "has the wrong view of RSS." In a follow-up post, he wrote that "fundamentally, Google Reader views RSS as email," by which I think he means users feel compelled to read everything in it. His view is that "reading every story is a meaningless concept" and that RSS Readers need to find a way around this issue.

2. Evolving User Interfaces

Some readers are expecting RSS Readers to transform their UIs in 2010, in particular for "processing life and news streams in the same interface." (Marco A Torres)

This has already happened to a degree in Google Reader, which has many nice social sharing features. @businessquests (comment 57) called Google Reader "a monitoring and intelligence tool enabled by tagging and publication of tag-based RSS feeds."

Eric (comment 19) agreed, commenting:

"I use it [Google Reader] not only as a constantly evolving newspaper, but to share and to create new snippets using the "Note in Reader..." bookmarklet. I also subscribe to others' interests and see what they have marked to share with me."

Eric also noted that he gets breaking news in Google Reader, thanks to its support of the real-time standard PubSubHubbub.

However a number of people complained that Google Reader isn't evolving fast enough in terms of user experience. I would put myself in that camp too. So, like me, you may want to check out some new feed reading innovations. Feedly (one of our Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2009), Fever (one of our Top 10 RSS & Syndication Technologies of 2009) and my6sense (an iPhone app - our review) are 3 apps that received multiple mentions from our readers.

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Very interesting idea on new way to interface with your computer or device.

Posted via web from Lee's posterous

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Great video on 2009. I really think Orli captures the core technologies and trends of 2009.

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RSS Reader Market in Disarray, Continues to Decline

Written by Richard MacManus / December 20, 2009 8:04 PM / 74 Comments « Prior Post

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State of elearning 2009

Tony Bates reflects on 2009, noting positive developments and disappointments:

Then we look at the public sector, and in particular the big research universities, and what do we see? Clickers, lecture capture, multiple screens in the classroom, learning management systems with Powerpoint slides and pdf files loaded, and a total lack of recognition that the c...

I just noticed a cool upgrade in Google Sites. You can now embed a Google spreadsheet as a list. This was a much need feature that allows you to edit the spreadsheet within google sites. I wonder how long it has been there? Look for it when you set the properties when embedding a spreadsheet in your page.

I am using Posterous now and thought that I would like to try to post to my blog from Gmail and so here it is. Top 10 things I Don't Have Time to Blog About

1. When people don't respond to your email. What do you do? Did they miss it? Do they hate you?
2. CreateWV Conference has some great tracks on Education.
3. Web 2.0 and elearning. Where are we at right now?
4. Where Marketing and Training come together....

Posted via email from Lee's posterous

Posted via email from Lee's posterous