I was surprised and pleased by the interest sparked by my recent note about RSS and syndication ("Why Don't More People Use RSS Feeds?"). Surprised, because the point of that note was that hardly anybody uses RSS, and that's pretty much the same as saying nobody gives a darn about it. Turns out people do care about RSS--they're just not using it.

Or are they? Officials at KnowNow, a vendor of technology that uses RSS, say that many people use RSS and are unaware that they're doing so. They took issue with a statistic I quoted from Forrester, which found in a September study that only 6% of Internet users are using RSS. KnowNow countered with a white paper from Yahoo that says 31% of Internet users are using RSS--they just don't know it. They're using personalized start pages, such as My Yahoo and My MSN.

Only 4% of users have knowingly used RSS, according to Yahoo, and that's pretty consistent with the Forrester report, and indicates that Forrester might simply have asked the wrong question.

That's pretty encouraging news to RSS advocates.

And that's pretty consistent with our experience with the greater Internet. Ask 100 random people if they use HTTP, POP3, or IMAP, and they'll say, "Huh?" or "I have no idea what those things are" or "No, I'm sorry, I'm lactose intolerant." As them if they use the Web and E-mail and you'll get different answers. And yet those are really the same questions.

Heck, my own father was an Internet addict, but if you'd asked him if he used the Web, he might well have said no. He called it "Netscape," because that's the application he used to access the Web. Even after he switched to Internet Explorer, he still called the Web "Netscape."

I started out that editor's note by saying: "I'm flummoxed why more people aren't using RSS feeds as their primary means of accessing frequently-visited Web sites." Strike that. Forget I said it. At 31% of Internet users, that's pretty much the adoption rate I'd expect for an emerging technology that's relatively recent, and kind of difficult to understand. The benefits of RSS are real and significant, but they're not easily grasped without trying it out awhile, and they don't become apparent immediately.

Still, more than two-thirds of Internet users aren't using RSS, and I was gratified to get lots of comments from them explaining why, and discussing what needs to happen before they do. I'll include highlights of those comments throughout the rest of this note.

Several readers took me to task for not explaining what RSS is and how they could get started using it.

Reader Jay Roberts said in a comment on the blog version of the editor's note (follow the link in the first paragraph, above): "Amusing that you state people don't use RSS because they don't know what it is and you never once define or explain it yourself."

As for why I didn't define it: I don't spell out acronyms unless they're useful; there are too many acronyms in this industry and most of them make no sense. But if you want to know, I'll tell you: RSS stands for either "Really Simple Syndication" or "RDF Site Syndication."

As to the larger issue--why I didn't explain what RSS is--um, actually, I thought I did. I said:

RSS is sort of like bulk E-mail, in that it sends you information in little pieces, which you can read in a client that looks very much like an E-mail client, with author information, headlines, and message body. As a matter of fact, some E-mail clients support RSS.

However, there are significant differences between RSS and E-mail:

With RSS, you control the subscription. Subscribe when you want to, delete the subscription when you want; it's entirely controlled by your client. To subscribe to an RSS feed, all you need to do is just input a URL into your RSS reader. You're not at the mercy of an E-mail list administrator, who might process your subscription in a timely fashion, and might not, and might sell your E-mail address to spammers.

RSS is much more anonymous than E-mail. You're giving out minimal information about yourself when you subscribe. On the other hand, with a mailing list, you're giving out, well, your E-mail address.

RSS can be displayed in lots of different ways. Some RSS readers look like E-mail clients, others are E-mail clients. You can use RSS to display headlines from one site on another site. For example, if you go to our new Windows Tech Center and scroll down a bit, you'll find a section called Microsoft Security Bulletins. That section is populated directly by a feed from Microsoft. Similarly Yahoo and Google's customizable home pages are populated by RSS feeds.

You can have an RSS reader built into your Web browser or as an add-on to your Web browser or a bar on your desktop. I'm sure I'm missing lots of option for consuming RSS.

Still, I don't blame readers for thinking I failed to explain it. RSS, like the Web itself, is dead simple once you've been given a demo for a few minutes, and utterly confusing to try to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

For more information on RSS, and how you can get started with RSS, visit the InformationWeek RSS page, which includes links to InformationWeek's own RSS feeds. That page needs a bit of updating, it's about a year and a half old, but it's a good place to start.

(How old is a year and a half in RSS time? Well, the page contains the following: "There's even been some experimentation with using RSS to distribute huge multimedia files: The idea is that you subscribe to a channel and the server trickles the multimedia file to your desktop slowly, over hours, in the background." That paragraph was, of course, written before podcasting emerged and became broadly popular in a matter of just a few months. Now, that paragraph looks silly and old-fashioned.)

Another thing that needs changing on our RSS page: I no longer recommend AmphetaDesk or Radio Userland as RSS clients; they were excellent in their day but now they're obsolete.

What clients would I recommend today? The simplest way to get started with RSS is to use the personalized portal pages of the major portal vendors: My Yahoo, My MSN, and Google Personalized Home. Those pages use RSS to bring readers content from outside sources.

If you're feeling adventurous, here are a few other ways you might want to give RSS a try: Protopage is a very slick personalizable portal page. Because it's written in Ajax, it's extremely customizable and flexible.

You can use RSS to get tickers on your desktop to give you news in real time. I use Desktop Sidebar, which provides RSS, weather, a control panel on your PC's resources, monthly calendar, a nice-looking analog clock, and a whole lot more. Other desktop RSS tickers include Yahoo Widgets, which, like Desktop Sidebar, does a whole lot more than RSS; and eLerts from KnowNow. All three of those applications are free.

What news aggregator do I use? Well, I mentioned Desktop Sidebar, but that's just something to glance at every now and then to get a quick rundown of headlines. For serious reading, I use FeedDemon. It's a power-user tool, so if you're not committed to RSS, you might want to try something simpler first--like the portal pages referenced above or Bloglines. FeedDemon is a marathon runner, fast, sturdy and--once you get the hang of it--easy to use.

Careful readers of this newsletter know that I was mad about Google Reader for a couple of months, but I eventually dropped it. I found it to be too slow; it was huffing and puffing and trailing behind me.

A couple of readers wrote in to say they don't use RSS because they find the simple, headline-and-blurb format of RSS to be boring; they prefer the graphics and design of a real Web page.

Reader Michael Smith said in a comment on the blog version of the editor's note: "The problem for me was having everything essentially boiled down to headlines and text just bored me to tears. ... Most Web sites are more like scanning a newspaper--the combination of graphics and headlines lets you pick and choose what you want to look at and then drill down."

Reader Gerry Allen agreed: "One good thing about Web sites--they are visual. The eye scans the page quickly and the mind selects items of interest. RSS feeds are indiscriminate; every new item is included. I find using RSS for a technical site like Anandtech just glops down everything new on the site. Scanning the page is easier and more efficient for me."

That's fair enough, and if you feel that way, you may be better off using one of the personal portal pages I mentioned before rather than a desktop application. Or RSS may simply not be for you.

Reader Kim Mains said: "The biggest problem people have today is managing their time. They have too much information in many cases. Adding ANOTHER piece of software that sends me stuff I have to spend time to review and filter out is not a good thing. The problem with RSS is it sends all changes to a Web site ... most of the time this is not what I want. If you had something that would search all Web sites perpetually and found things that I, specifically have said I am interested in (and not just word matches on a page), and sent it to me in E-mail, now THAT would be valuable. I definitely do NOT want another E-mail-like client I have to check."

Actually, I've heard about applications that claim to do just that, though not necessarily in E-mail. Anybody tried 'em out? How do they work?

Reader CJH agreed with Mains' point about fearing RSS would be a timesink. He or she identified himself as, by nature, an early adopter who should have been expected to jump on RSS. But she didn't. "I'm held back by the concern that opening a feed from a site to my desktop will begin yet another deluge of unwanted ads, spam and garbage. Finally, I'm concerned that if I relegate my experience to a stream that is determined by others, I may miss out on the stories and ideas that make the Internet truly valuable."

Ease of use is a major obstacle to RSS adoption. More comments from the forums:

From "XiferoDiferous" (cool nickname): I work in IT support. But I too don't fully understand RSS. I understand WHAT it is, but don't know how to IMPLEMENT RSS. I see the ubiquitous orange RSS thingy, but if you click on it, as most people I know who ask me about RSS do, they get a screen full of HTML krapola. This is a real turnoff as there is NO accompanying explanation of what to DO with it."

John Mooney agreed that asking users to configure an RSS reader--no matter how simple that might be--is too much. "Most people probably still have MSN home page as their default in IE (unless they got spyware--then they don't know how to reset it back)."

And Sheldon Meingarten said he was concerned about security, saying he was concerned that RSS would be another channel through which he could receive viruses, spyware, and other infections.

Reader Mike Azzara summed it up when he said in E-mail:

Mitch, who gives a darn about RSS? Here's what I mean:

Part of the problem is with Forrester's question, "Do you consume RSS?" If a typical podcast subscriber is asked that question, will they answer yes?..."

He noted that, when he asked a colleague how to subscribe to a podcast of our The News Show, he was sent a URL that he entered into a box on iTunes, and he started automatically receiving the video feeds. He didn't need to know that the feed was RSS-based. And that's how it should be.

Mike concluded: "So the moral of my story is that RSS can ONLY be a huge, mainstream success when no one has a clue what it is. I don't give a darn about RSS!"

Mike's right, and I'd say that even if he weren't senior VP of Internet business for CMP Media, which makes him so far above me in the corporate hierarchy that I need to wear an oxygen mask on the rare occasion when I visit his office.

Also, Mike and I are both from New York, so he did not actually say "give a darn," but, rather, used another word, one that comprises about 25% of the vocabulary of suburban New Yorkers.