Do We Need a Simpler RSS?

Last night I wrote about RSS and whether we need to do something simpler over on my Crosby Group business blog, Connection. It seems to have struck a nerve with a number of people since there is now a good discussion going on in the comments. An excerpt:

RSS is one of the technical bits of glue that makes social media run behind the scenes. We may know it most commonly as a news feed or a feed from a blog that we can read via a feed reader (or aggregator) such a Google Reader, but really these are not easy for the average person to understand or fully implement without some explanation. Without that basic understanding it is difficult to go beyond this to understanding other uses of RSS and help to explain them.

And I went on to ask the question:

But, aside from all of us explaining RSS to the uninitiated and creating webpages, widgets and other things using RSS without identifying it as such, is there a way to make RSS easier?

A very short summary from the comments received:

Barriers to people using it especially include the name itself. If we gave it an easier name (such as just “feed”) rather than an obscure acronym, it would go a long way to marketing the concept.

It is not so much the RSS feed itself that needs to be simplified, but the ways we use it including the tools we use. One person identified as Time Dalkat in particular suggested the use of an icon:

When you click the subscribe button it should drop a physical icon on your desktop with which you can drop into any reader. People like something that seems tangible.

I like this idea in particular because then the icon could be moved around to accomplish other tasks, such as working with a simplified version of Yahoo! Pipes or the like.

I invite you to join in the conversation. It also seems to be getting some “link love” on Digg, so feel free to “Digg” it if you are so inclined. And a side discussion is also taking place over on law librarian Steven Cohen’s blog Library Stuff.