Only geeks use RSS feeds. Is this true? Unfortunately yes. Why? well because like most things in web technology and computers only geeks can understand that nothing is one hundred percent all the time. There are probably 5 reasons that the average internet user does not know about or trust RSS feeds.

RSS is still unknown

The average internet user still has no idea what RSS is or how to go about using it. Though Google, Yahoo and MSN have reader services they don't appeal to anyone but the internet savvy. Ask someone at a gathering of people that actually work in an IT oriented field and you will be surprised at how little they know about RSS technology. I recently participated in a seminar for social networking and only 2 of the 20 persons I spoke to used and understood RSS.

RSS feeds fail frequently

Many RSS feeds do not work or fail frequently. The owners of RSS feeds do not check them often enough to make sure they are working. Even the big websites with dozens working on them have not been able to prevent their feeds from failing. We all know how visitors feel about web pages that don't work. While website owners may be constantly validating and testing web pages to make sure they are visible and valid in the case of RSS feeds it is not quite the same. RSS feeds go without maintenance for months without being looked at or validated. And just like in the case of a badly coded web page the site visitor is unlikely to notify the website owner of a problem with a RSS feed. They just surf on to the next feed or website.

RSS Feeds are sensitive

Why do feeds break? Well because the XML documents that they are built on are sensitive. An XML document is mostly sensitive to whitespace at the beginning of the document before the <?xml...> declaration and thereafter some characters may break them depending on how they are coded. Frequently a website builder will trust this part of their website to the knowledge and expertise of the open source CMS creators. The developers of an open source CMS may be leaving the testing of RSS feeds up to the user group. So you can see how a problem can go unnoticed for a very long time.

• Failed to parse RSS feed Opensource CMS: Invalid document end at line 1.
• Failed to parse RSS feed Mamboserver.com: Invalid document end at line 1.
• Failed to parse RSS feed e107.org: EntityRef: expecting ';' at line 133.

I looks as though upgrading to the latest version of Mambo has caused feeds for two high traffic websites to fail.

Feeds that have been removed

When a website changes its domain name or a web page is not available there are solutions for redirecting and notifying the visitor. Website owners are aware that they will lose traffic if they do not take in account changes in URLs and content. Apache .htaccess files and 404 file not found documents can be used to take the visitor to the newer and proper area of the website. But for some reason no one uses these tools to redirect a RSS feed URL.

At this moment I see notices of errors from RSS feeds from four open source projects. I have checked two of them and they no longer exist. The websites have been updated and the old feeds URLs are completetly missing. There are new feeds but I doubt that I will subscribe to them because the websites have proven themselves to be unreliable.

An example of a missing feed during a domain change is the http://www.openngo.org domain which unapparently has become http://civicrm.org/. While the main URL has been redirected the RSS feed is dead.

A notification service is needed

Services like feedburner.com provide lots of functions but the one that is missing is the broken feed service. It would be nice for website owners to get an email about the status of their RSS feeds. This way if they upgrade their website with the latest CMS or blog software version and the RSS feed breaks they will know. I think too many assume that feeds will automatically work when going from Drupal 4.6 to Drupal 4.7 for instance.

Update: Feedburner.com does have a feed status notification service

Conclusion

RSS feeds are becoming more and more important because of the importance that website owners place on them not because visitors think they are needed. Dreamhost.com has recently replaced their newsletter notification with an RSS feed. While I appreciate the convenience of a having a feed. I don't think that it is a good replacement for a newsletter.

To the average website visitor RSS feeds seem to be a geek toy requiring knowledge that they don't have time to gain or just are are not interested in. If web browsers included feed readers by default it would probably increase RSS usage 10 fold. But since none of the web browser makers seem to be interested in trying to do this RSS may remain unknown and unpopular for years to come.

Happy Publishing!

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