I am a strong supporter of RSS. I try to publish all my sites with a full feed to ease access to information and try to find ways around restrictions, technological1 or otherwise, that would prevent me from sharing as much as I can.
So, taking this a step forward, I think we should start considering moving large parts of the web completely into RSS - with a few changes.
First of all, this move would be motivated by the free flow of information, still. A lot of websites avoid publishing full feeds because they need to generate traffic back to the source for advertising purposes and they cannot easily do it currently [although Slashdot has overcome that issue and Feedburner offers an easy way to take it even further.] What I am suggesting is a way to push content in an itemized format for those websites where it makes sense to do so, while ensuring a certain personality for the website and a revenue stream are still maintained.
OmniWeb took a stab at this already via a way to check if your bookmarks have been updated. You can then run back to the webpage and see what’s new - but how far should you keep on checking? How many new entries are there and how many are you not really interested in? Scroll, scroll, scroll… I’m sure many people are not like me, but I grow weary and uninterested in the website and they lose a visitor by trying to force-feed me content that I’m not interested in2.
Blogs, news, anything with segmented, episodic content can be pushed over the wire with a bit more bling, were RSS to be updated/revamped. I realise the danger of nasty websites and potential security problems this might give way to, but as with every technology, it’s a risk we need to take and work out the details. What I’m thinking is, really, a way to throw some CSS around your RSS and extend on the JavaScript functionality we already have to provide an even better experience inside the RSS reader. I know a lot of web developers want people to see the site every so often, but I’m willing to bet a lot of content sources would think twice before publishing obnoxious feed excerpts [the most annoying ones are those that abruptly cut the text after some pre-set number of words] instead of a more polished RSS feed.
I know that even blogs aren’t only made up of entries - I myself have a few different other things on this site so I am happy to know people sometimes decide to hit up the homepage and see what’s new from time to time. I also wouldn’t mind having a ‘mini-site’ in your RSS reader that, without eating up all your resources, can make your experience a bit more exciting.
Caveat: I know information itself is far more important than bells and whistles. In a way, I see this as a meeting ground for content providers that might like to be able to offer their information entirely through RSS but cannot do so for economic reasons. John Gruber’s Daring Fireball has recently gone full-feed due to advertisers taking on the task of providing revenue that is otherwise ‘lost’. In the end, information will be easier to access for all.
