Why Is This Important?

Although I’ve decided not to continue purchasing NetNewsWire in the future, I still read Brent Simmon’s blog inessential.com. His latest post about how NetNewsWire reads feeds contains the following statement:

It’s important, in this increasingly cross-platform and multiple-gadget world, to be able to get your feeds anywhere, anytime.

Can anyone explain why this is true? Exactly why is it important to be able to “get my feeds” anywhere? And why is it important to be able to get my feeds anytime?

I think it would be reasonable to say people want these options. And I can certainly understand why NewsGator or anyone else who stands to profit from offering services around this desire want us to feel this is important. But I can’t believe anyone actually relies on an RSS feed for time critical or important information? Exactly what would be the harm if I don’t hear about the latest buzz-word compliant social bookmarking or photo-sharing Web site until I get home from work and can fire up my browser or feed reader?

For those of use who were paying attention during the whole Push Technology phase of the Internet, this has striking similarities. And I think in five years the end result will be the same.

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Comments

cbd May 18th, 2006 @ 9:14 am

But if I could get my feeds anywhere, anytime, I could do even more procrastidistractination!

Brent Simmons May 20th, 2006 @ 5:27 pm

Yes, lots of people do rely on feeds for important information. Not everybody, sure. But I hear from tons of NetNewsWire users who do. I think that the importance of feeds will continue to grow, and more and more people will rely on them.

Hey, I could be wrong. But my experience as an aggregator developer and listening to what users say — and watching the number of users grow — tells me that yes, feeds are critical for more and more people.

Arthur July 5th, 2006 @ 3:47 pm

I copy my feeds around already using the previous version of NetNewsWire. I use Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/) to copy my setup (Firefox, NNW, code etc.) from my laptop to my work box.

Why? Well, I read a mix of personal and work RSS feeds and I read both in both places. This is what happens when your job and your interests overlap :)

Jeff Watkins July 5th, 2006 @ 5:26 pm

I’ve actually started reconsidering whether to use an RSS reader at all. The problem is that since I’ve started using an RSS reader, I feel like I’m less informed about a greater number of topics. In part this is because I don’t read the comments, because the feed reader doesn’t make that simple.

Now integrating comments would be a real advance in the reader market.