Theoretically, technology exists to make our lives easier. In the real world however, it’s not that simple. In many ways, technology over complicates even the simplest tasks in our lives. And so the story continues with RSS.

RSS is one of those technologies that seems like a revolutionary way to simplify your life at first, but ends with tireless hours of complex organization and wasted time. At the very core, RSS is a brilliant idea – bringing the news you care about to you, instead of you going to the news. However, the existing RSS readers ruin the simple foundation that RSS was built upon. Once again, software is shown to be the major bottleneck in the development of a platform.

The creation of any revolutionary new technology represents a major paradigm shift. However, in order to explain a new technology to a person, you must compare it to an existing technology. Sometimes these comparisons don’t always fit perfectly (for instance, see the original Macintosh manual where the Finder is described as “a central hallway in the Macintosh house”). Two different comparisons are typically used when explaining RSS – email inboxes and newspapers.

RSS as an Inbox

It’s no coincidence that the most common way to consume RSS is similar to one of the most common uses of a computer. Everyone uses and understands the way an email inbox works, and so, that knowledge is translated into an RSS reader that functions like an inbox. You refresh your RSS feeds much as you get new mail in your email client. You sort your feeds by folders much as you do – or should do – with email. And there is a big annoying number that marks your “unread count”, or the number of new RSS items you have to “read”.

This is where the comparison between RSS and email fails.

RSS is not email and shouldn’t be treated like it. Most email is specifically directed at you, and requires your attention to read and possibly take action. RSS feeds, on the other hand, are not specifically for you. They don’t all require your attention, and need to be “read”.

How many times have I come home from a weekend away, only to find the RSS count in the thousands. RSS quickly becomes a burden that is dreaded. And so the question remains – is there a better way to get your content?

RSS as a Newspaper

Recently, there has been a push towards a different approach for RSS. Instead of treating RSS feeds as emails in an inbox, Dustin MacDonlad’s new app, Times, takes a new – actually, an old – approach to RSS. Alex Wooley, a casual RSS user, sums up the game-changing nature of Times nicely:

Before the introduction of Times, it’s fair to say I wasn’t really an RSS worshiper. I had NetNewsWire installed on my system (after they made it free) and opened it once in a while (where I would be blasted with 200 feeds which I really didn’t want to have to read through). So, I didn’t want or have a need to read RSS feeds. Upon downloading Times, I knew I’d been hit with a new kind of RSS feeder, something I hadn’t experienced before, something quintessentially different.

Times frees RSS from the dreaded “unread count”, and allows you to consume RSS feeds in a different, more refreshing way. The philosophy is that you will be able to scan headlines and find the content that is appealing to you without having to go through and “read” every single article. While it’s an interesting approach, it is suited for more casual RSS users. When you begin to have hundreds of feeds in your arsenal, Times quickly becomes cumbersome and useless.