In late 2003 I became a raving RSS addict. If I could find a feed, I subscribed to it. If I couldn’t find a feed, I found a way to scrape the content I wanted. I even contacted people directly and told them to provide content in RSS format. There was no stopping me. I’m still an addict — I read over 200 feeds on a daily basis.

Needless to say I saw many benefits to consuming information in this format. I bugged my boss so much about it that she told me pilot a program. Since we couldn’t modify desktop configurations easily, I chose to introduce people to RSS via Bloglines. I created Bloglines cheat sheets, a set of starter feeds, and hands-on demos for about twenty of my co-workers. Today only two of those people are still using it. While 10% adoption isn’t a bad number, it’s hardly an enthusiastic response.

My organization will be rolling out IE 7 with its built-in RSS capability and people have started to approach me about buliding RSS feeds for their internal sites and applications. However, I don’t want to jump into creating RSS feeds until I understand why it didn’t take the first time. I asked some of my co-workers why they stopped using Bloglines after the pilot. Here are some of their responses:

1. Many didn’t bake RSS reading into their daily routine, and forgot to return to the site after the pilot ended.
2. People were afraid that they’d miss something if they didn’t go to the original site. RSS has some credibility issues with these folks.
3. Partial feeds – people had to visit the original site to get the full entry anyway.
4. They’re too busy to learn the new technology.
5. They’re comfortable with their current information consumption methods.
6. Would rather seek out information when they need it instead of letting it build up in an aggregator.
7. Building new information sources is not fostered in the corporate culture.
8. Too much variation in how feeds are displayed/updated. Some sites will push older content when new content is created, so looking through feeds is perceived as a waste of time.
9. They prefer getting content via e-mail.

I found several parallels between these reasons and Problogger’s entry on why readers unsubscribe from blogs. I think I’m looking at a slightly different problem – not why people don’t read blog (and other) content. They do. I need to understand why they don’t prefer getting content through an aggregator. It’s completely valid get content in other ways, but if I’m expected to deliver content via RSS for my organization then I need to have business justification for doing so.

When the issues surrounding RSS adoption are resolved, I’m sure my organization will be filled with other raving RSS addicts. Until then, I remain one of the few feed readers.

Cute fluffy cat taking a nap.