NYT Column a Watershed Moment for RSS

RSS reached a watershed moment today. For the first time the New York Times published a story in its business section that showcases the consumer benefits of RSS technology. Previously the Times had only noted RSS in its tech section, as this page shows. A Factiva search for both RSS and R.S.S. confirms this.

By contrast, also using Factiva, I discovered that the word "RSS" has appeared in eWeek nearly 500 times over the past year. This is far from unusual. It always takes time for new technologies to reach a tipping point where they escape the realm of the trades and seep into the mainstream media consciousness. That's the way it should be since the audiences are different. But RSS finally broke into the Times Business section today, which is a big deal.

In the Sunday Business section this week, columnist James Fallows wrote about how blogs and RSS are enhancing society's collective knowledge.

Blogs have also become easier to navigate, through the system known to techies as R.S.S. I've sat through debates about what those letters originally stood for; what they mean is that you can have new entries from chosen blogs automatically delivered by e-mail soon after they appear. Some people would rather skip R.S.S. and just cruise through favorite blogs periodically. Others like the convenience of a regular R.S.S. feed: it's like home delivery of mail instead of a post office box, but on a much faster cycle. My current favorite among R.S.S. programs has an ugly-even-for-software name: intraVnews. It presents blog entries, sorted by topic, in my Outlook mailbox, and it is free.

A year from now RSS will become part of the lexicon of every tech-savvy business person.