RSS is a huge part of E2.0. One presenter showed the statistics that the average knowledge worker spends 9-10 hours a week searching for knowledge and is only 50% successful. But as I have talked with others about using RSS in an organization, the prevalent comment was that most people won’t want to use it. It is complicated to set up and they have to go back to check to see if there are updates. I could understand their arguments (I had similar concerns) but I didn’t understand RSS then. To be honest, I don’t understand it technically a ton right now, but I understand it better.
The way I know RSS it through 1)Google Reader, and online RSS app and 2) Feedreader, an app I downloaded and used for internal RSS feeds. But I would not hesitate to state that most readers/contributors would use one like this. I learned, however, that RSS can be in other forms.
- It can be a small alert box, much like an IM notification that quickly gets your attention and then quickly disappears. I believe, however, that it is a desktop widget that would need to be installed.
- It can be digest like, sending you information on updated or newly added information to your email.
- It can be fed to a portal page so that any time the user goes there (say a home page for an intranet) it will show the latest and greatest.
Even more, RSS feeds should be shared. Let’s say I have a feed I particularly like. I should be able to send it to someone else with similar likes. The user needs to be in as much control as they want – little or all. And it should be personalized. The user should have the ability to input what information he/she wants to see. The system should also recognize what the person has viewed and has an interest in and then give the user recommended feeds.
Doing this allows employees or customers to pick up on personalized and relevant information quickly and easily AND in the way they want to receive it. It pushes the information to them, rather than the user manually searching and pulling information to them. This is lifelong (or job long) learning – constant, timely, personalized.
