RSS in the Black/Urban Niche

June 13, 2008

How important is RSS in your digital life? Well if you’re like me then answer is VERY! I use it to keep up with blogs, news sources, and events; just about everything in my digital life is in one form or another powered by RSS. Being without RSS would mean that I would have to go out to see what’s happening on the web instead of the new happenings on the web finding me. I thought most people within my generation, used RSS like this; that was until I had a discussion with a group of friends about the power of blogging. Our discussion was about how blogs have impacted mainstream media. During the conversation I mentioned RSS as a distribution method and how it revolutionized the way content was delivered; to which I received a bunch of blank stares. After a few minutes of explaining RSS, walking them through my feed reader, and showing them the logo, I realized that they had no clue what RSS was. Keep in mind that this group was outside of my normal “techie” circle, but nevertheless people I would call the typical mainstream black users: late 20’s early 30’s, professional, highly educated, great jobs, computer literate, uses computers for both work and entertainment, and that’s why I was completely shocked that they had no clue what RSS was. So after talking to my friends, I asked “How do you know when your favorite site has a new post?” To which one replied, “I just check it periodically to see.”

This conversation made me think, where would Web 2.0 be without RSS? One of Web 2.0’s key attributes is the ability to share, and no technology beyond search and email has contributed more to the sharing of content than RSS. The creation of RSS led to the ability to mashup content, is the power behind podcasting, and has contributed to the success of blogging. RSS’ power has also led to the success of sites like Delicious, Page Flakes, Netvibes, Twitter, and many others. So if RSS has yet to engulf the black mainstream, can Web 2.0 technologies in the black niche thrive? Imagine creating a YouTube channel where your audience would have to periodically check back to see if you had posted new content, or a Flickr page that could not be mashed-up with your other web pages, or how about if a site like Upcoming had to send an email to alert you of every event in your area. None of these would be as successful without RSS.

RSS’s lack of mainstream appeal is not just an urban niche epidemic; the large majority of all mainstream users’ don’t understand RSS. But the difference between mainstream and the Black niche space is in the sheer numbers of users. If 2% of mainstream clients understand the technology (just an example), that may be enough to sustain a decent business. I am not sure if that same percentage in the urban/black niche is enough.

So what can a programmer, interested in the black niche market, do to attract an audience that does not use RSS in large numbers? I think we only have 4 options.

1. Build it and hope that RSS use increases.

2. Build around it and hope your audience keeps coming back.

3. Create a new content delivery method.

4. Teach the audience about RSS feeds.

But the one thing we cannot do is assume that our audience is just like us.

What do you all think?

Category: Content, Digital Media, web 2.0 | Tags: black, niche, RSS, urban, web2.0

Roddykat

Great article. I can hardly imagine life without RSS (though I've lived through it). Don' really frequent site that don't use it, either. You are right when you say that those of us who use it and know what it is think that everybody does. But I do think that it's "mainstream" appeal may be growing. Slowly, but growing nonetheless. And I guess the only viable option out of the four given is #5, which means 1,2, and 4 must be done. The question I've had before is how do you explain what RSS is to someone not versed in it. Again, great article.

Lynne d Johnson

Good post, but have you considered that people may use RSS without knowing that they use it. In my FT gig, we did user testing of our site, and found that when confronted, people didn't use RSS or know the term per se, but they did use such services as iGoogle, or other content aggregation starter page type of sites. Still there were others who still use bookmarking, even bookmarking in Firefox, which they didn't realize they were using RSS. Using the word "Subscribe" vs "Rss" or "Subscribe" vs an RSS symbol is a better way to get people to follow your Web 2.0 content in the way it was intended. All sorts of people are using RSS on My Space and Facebook, again without realizing it.

There's a learning curve there, education that has to happen, but does it really? Think about why AOL still thrives, though many "tech heads" may not find it useful at all: You can find the content you want easily. It is curated and presented to you, and in some cases you can personalize that content, like you can with Google News, or even the New York Times.

I think the adoption rates are there, and I'm going to try and track down the numbers for you, but loads of people are using "share buttons" and "widgets" etc, all again, without realizing that they're using RSS. We have to find a new way to talk about RSS perhaps, especially within this niche.

Your argument here though kind of points to the need for something like what GlobalGrind is doing then. BlackPlanet tried to do a digg like service, but the users had to submit all the news. What GG's advantage is in this regard, is a cadre of qualified editors and content types who can curate the content and aid the user in the discovery of new content and sites. The challenge for GG is getting its product out there in front of the masses within this niche. Right now, it's just the bloggers and early adopters, and watchers of Run's House that even know they exist.

Here's something from TechCrunch on end of year reporting on Google: "The star performer for the year was Google’s personalized start page service iGoogle which increased traffic in the 12 months to November by 267.64%." Imagine what the number looks like now. What about for MyYahoo?

There's even RSS use on Blackberrys, but again, I don't think people know they are using RSS.

Also reports and surveys show that the US has one of the highest RSS adoption rates in the world, though it trails other countries.

Again, I think the conversation needs to be had differently. I don't think we should ask people if they use RSS, we should ask them if they subscribe to sites, or if they use start pages like MyYahoo or iGoogle. If you look at traffic to major sites nowadays, bookmarked visits are dropping off while RSS visits are growing , as well as organic search (if the site has a good RSS and SEO strategy). And many content providers find RSS to be a viable option of supplementing their newsletter marketing.

The fact though, that at least one of your friends says they just check back in to see if the site updates tells me something else though -- perhaps you should have taken your survey further (if you did my apologies) to find out how many of them read blogs and how often they read them.

I could go on and on about this topic, but I'll stop here.

Jason "VerSe" Anderson

One word. Viigo! RSS on the Blackberry I believe and breathe it. RSS is only my sites, and in part we educate people. Like some of the comments above, many people are using it, just don't know RSS was the term for it. I explain RSS to people in terms of TV.

I tell them, the same way you can watch Family Guy on Fox, then TBS, that is called syndication. Then I tell them this is what RSS is, it allows your content to be syndicated elsewhere.

So i think it is a combo of 1, 2, and 4 to get user more aware of RSS.