Really Simple Something

Really Simple Something
: Jason Kottke says what I’ve been saying for some time — but much better: that RSS isn’t really about syndication. It’s a higher form of content distribution because it’s smarter; it knows more about itself (e.g., what’s a headline and what’s body text and when it was written and how much there is) and the readers are smarter than plain old browsers (they know what I’ve read).

As I get ready to implement RSS at my day-job sites — and work with a few vendors on RSS readers — I keep facing this same problem: What is it? How do we describe it? How do we tell readers why they should use this and what it will do for them? What the hell do we call it?

What RSS really needs is a marketing product manager. [via Ross Mayfield]