In today’s Daily Report, Jeffrey Zeldman weighs up some of the pros and cons of personally published sites offering a syndicated news feed.
Having recently started using and publishing in RSS, I felt that there was more to the discussion that Jeffrey was letting on. I needed to make clear my own opinions on the matter. It’s disagreeing with someone that does that.
I monitor a number of personal sites via their syndicated newsfeeds. The ones I keep an eye on are typically the ones that are updated frequently (maybe once or twice a day), that I typically wouldn’t have the time to read otherwise. Without visiting each site in turn, I can quickly see who has posted new content, scan-read the new post, and if it’s interesting I hit Enter and the site itself opens in a browser window. (Reading direct from a newsreader is dull as rocks).
This works well for me because I can find the content I’m interested in quickly, and then still enjoy that content to its full by viewing the site. The end result of that is I get to peer into more good sites and read great content more often than if I was browsing traditionally. With so many excellent sites out there, this can only be a good thing.
Jeffrey suggests that there’s little benefit in a site like K10K having an RSS feed, as the site it visually orientated. For K10K, design is the most important thing at the expense of lesser issues like bandwidth and usability – design is their focus and the whole point of their site, which is fine by me. However, they also have great news content which is updated very frequently. Sitting and waiting for K10K to download and render is like shitting nails, but worth it for the design. For me, it’s not worth doing 3 or 4 times a day for the news items – I’d rather just grab those by RSS thankyouverymuch. I’ll visit the site for the content I’m forced to download every time I visit, not for the plaintext.
What it comes down to is the ability to use tools to get the most enjoyment out of the sites I like to visit. I enjoy the sites for the entire experience – written and visual content, and I don’t think that will change any time soon. I find newsfeeds exceptionally helpful in getting me to the right content at the right time.
I think that reflects my opinions … subject to change.
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:)