Will Safari RSS Change The Mac Web?

[MacBytes]

http://www.macbytes.com/images/bytessig.gif (http://www.macbytes.com)

Category: Opinion/Interviews
Link: Will Safari RSS Change The Mac Web? (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20050415073112)

Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)
Approved by arn

[Bear]

Will Safari RSS Change The Mac Web?In a word: Yes!

Why do I say that? It appears that some of the people running Mac sites are somewhat run down, so their sites are sometimes slow to get updated when things happen.

With RSS feeds, most people will find out rather quickly and won't need a lot of the news sites.

Where sites like MacRumors adds value is the fact that they have forums to discuss the news items. How much of value the discussion has is entirely up to debate however.

[redAPPLE]

d'uh. the answer is of course, yes.

everything that is different would cause change, one way or another.

[Paul O'Keefe]

No, it won't change the mac web for most people. It's just an update another feature. Nothing earth shattering. Most people don't use many of the features of their apps. That includes browsers.

[Stella]

Fire fox supports it already, and I don't see a revolution ( perhaps it may be different if IE had it too ).. nice that safari will have this feature though - keeping up with the times, unlike other browsers around..

[Savage Henry]

I've tried it on my Windows Firefox at work, but I have yet to find it earth-bustingly useful. I'll probably dip my toe in the Safari version at home as a kind of second chance, but I'm not expecting fireworks.

So my thread-answering assesment would be a shoulder-shrugging 'pthuh'.

[formicahjones]

"This could spell significant direct trouble for sites like MacSurfer, MacBytes, Watchster, MacPulse, MacMiner and many others, as well as cause indirect conflict for sites such as this one and pretty much any other Mac site that depends on traffic from such sites listed above."


I dont think so... just because Apple-x has RSS doesn't mean its immune to posting ****y content. The sites that are Pro will thrive, and perhaps add RSS if people really care about it in great numbers, and the ****y sites will write articles like this one to take a cheap shot at the competition.
Its a little insulting, actually; do they really think we are so stupid that after reading the article we're all going to discontinue viewing of the sites listed?

me no think so

[kainjow]

If I'm going to be in the browser, I want to view HTML not RSS. I only want to view RSS in a newsreader like NetNewsWire, so no I don't think it will have much of a change.. maybe for the newbies out there who only explore new features in the programs they use. But for everyone else who already has newsreaders, it'll stay the same I think.

[applextrent]

the ****y sites will write articles like this one to take a cheap shot at the competition.
Its a little insulting, actually; do they really think we are so stupid that after reading the article we're all going to discontinue viewing of the sites listed?

me no think so

What? How is my article a cheap shot at anyone? If anything, my article is anti-Apple for putting such a huge emphasis on RSS. The idea for the article even came to me when I was having a chat with Arn, you know the guy who runs this site. My argument is clearly generalization and future statements of causation. It is kind of hard to say I'm taking a cheap shot at anyone when my article and website clearly links to and supports the sites mentioned. Also, I only suggested that if more and more users start to use Safari RSS over time then headline tracking sites may see a decline in traffic. Its common sense. Read the whole article before you comment.

--Trent Lapinski
Apple-X.net

[shamino]

(Note: I wrote this before I fully read the original article. It is based on silly claims made by other people about how RSS is going to eliminate ad revenues altogether. After reading several comments here, I mistakenly assumed that the original article was another one of those. Read this posting in that context.)

This is just silly.

Sure, if webmasters decide to put entire article content in their RSS feeds, then people will read the feed and never visit the articles themselves. But a webmaster would have to be completely brain-dead to do that if he's depending on ad revenues from the site.

If, on the other hand, he just puts teasers (headlines and maybe a 1-2 line abstract) in there, it will increase traffic to the site by allowing people to read more articles from a wider variety of sites.

Without RSS, I can only read two or three sites a day. I have to visit the home page and sift through everything on the home page (or worse, on nested index pages) in order to find the few articles I actually want to read. This is time consuming and a real waste of time if I'm not planning on reading everything on the site.

With RSS, I can pull down the feeds from dozens of sites and display the headlines from them all in Firefox's sidebar. Instead of reading through lots of (often cluttered) index pages, I can just scan my sidebar for anything that looks interesting. One click and I'm at each article. Which means I can read more articles in the time I have available - meaning I'm loading more article pages and seeing more ads than before.

RSS is the reason why I, for example, take the time to read new artcles on Daring Fireball, Apple Insider, Think Secret, and Apple's Hot News site when I never bothered with them in the past. I'm not going to bother visiting visiting their home pages every day to check for new/interesting headlines (especially for those sites where new content doesn't appear every day), but it's no big deal to glance over to my Firefox sidebar each morning to scan the headlines for new content.

[shamino]

Also, I only suggested that if more and more users start to use Safari RSS over time then headline tracking sites may see a decline in traffic. Its common sense. Read the whole article before you comment.
You may be right if the only thing the site does is aggregate headlines from other sites.

Sites that provide value-added features (like the MacRumors discussions attached to every MacBytes article) will continue to bring traffic, however. Altough I subscribe to the RSS feeds for many of the sites that MacBytes posts links to, I still go to MacBytes in order to post my opinions on those articles.

I suspect that there are many more people who do what I do.

As for those sites that simply post links with no value-added content, I really can't feel to sorry for them. Their type of site is rapidly becoming obsolete, thanks to a wide variety of search/lookup technologies, not just RSS. Safari/RSS and whatever impact it may have is a symptom, not a cause of this problem. And the solution is that those sites need to expand to include something beyond a simple collection of links - like discussion forums or original content.

[xtbfx]

If anything, my article is anti-Apple for putting such a huge emphasis on RSS.

So let me get this straight. You're 'anti-Apple' because they support newer technologies that have yet to be used by the masses (ie. everyone using RSS)?

I don't see what your big fuss is. I think that if people like your site, RSS won't change that.

You can't gripe at Apple for trying to take your readers away. That's stupid. When I read this article I got the impression that you were whining about RSS.

Face it, RSS is here to stay. Don't like it? Take it up with the creators of RSS instead of the people who adopt it.

[broken_keyboard]

Safari RSS won't change diddly squat. And how.

Because looking at 1 or 2 sites you trust and have experience with is better than looking at a computer generated aggregation of hundreds of sites you don't know from Adam.

[deckmoney]

Actually I welcome the addition of RSS feed reading to Safari. I have used NewsFire, NetNewsWire, and Bloglines for the past year or so, and have to say that I love RSS feeds. I think Safari RSS looks very functional and I can see myself creating folders for each set of my feeds (e.g Tech News, Mac News, World News, Favorite Bloggers) and viewing them when I feel like it.

Some posters said they don't think Safari RSS will be successful because Firefox already has it and it hasn't made much of an effect. The truth is that Firefox's implementation is more like "if you like Slashdot you can add the feed and I'll update the headlines occasionally so you know what's out there". Safari RSS displays more than the RSS title and is fully customizable.

With that said, RSS actually INCREASES the amount of traffic to a site. Also, if I find a page that has great content but doesn't offer a feed and a site which offers about the same content but DOES have an RSS feed, I'll choose the site with the RSS feed anyday. I find RSS is a great way for me to keep up on current events, both world, nationally, tech-related, Mac-related, etc. when I want to. I consider RSS to be like TiVo for news - I can keep the news I want for as long as I want and read it whenever I feel like it.

I realize the Mac community does have a few sites that use human editors to link to Mac articles and I love those sites (MacSurfer is my favorite). I see no reason why they couldn't offer a feed for each section of their links; I've never clicked on the advertisements there before anyways. I'm sure they could use the occasional advertisement in their RSS feed if they feel they need the cash to pay for their hosting.

Will Safari RSS pursuade me to move from Bloglines to it? Probably not, but I'll still use Safari RSS quite often.

[joecool85]

Fire fox supports it already, and I don't see a revolution ( perhaps it may be different if IE had it too ).. nice that safari will have this feature though - keeping up with the times, unlike other browsers around..

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