Web feeds have been around now for a pretty long time and it’s pretty much destroyed the way that we browse the web, yet there are many many people that aren’t using it. Not because of anything technical, but because of a lack of understanding of what it really is and how it can be beneficial.
I believe that the slow adoption of the technology comes only from the use of the acronym RSS in the first place and I honestly prefer a more semantic approach. Lets all please stop referring to XML/RSS/Atom feeds as they are and simply call them FEEDS.
RSS may eventually phase out and the Atom format or another future format will take over, but it’s all the same thing and we don’t need users to know that. So instead of reeducating them down the road I think we should just refer to them in a more user friendly way.
I went and looked around at how site owners are referencing their feeds and which images they use to denote them and there was a pretty broad range of findings. A couple sites still had the old Orange XML buttons up. I mean didn’t those phase out years ago? Most sites had a combination of images and text links for their feeds, others just had images.
One thing that most sites have in common is that they refer to them, at least, as a feed in some way or another; be it an XML feed, an RSS feed a News Feed or Web Feed. Sites that handled it the best called them “Site Feed”, “Job Listing Feed” , “News Feed” or an “Upcoming Event Feed” and thought about the needs and web education of their users as apposed to their own.
So next time your thinking about sticking a nice big link to your xml feed, please know that only the technically savvy will understand the benefits and use until it becomes as second nature as email.
I'm Brad Cooper, a user experience designer and front-end programmer with a passion for actualizing visions. I strive to create a piece of art in each site that I put together both visually and technically.
