Is RSS Dead?

A few months ago I was on a panel at InnoTech with friends Kyle Flaherty, Bryan Person and Sheila Scarborough. The focus of the panel was on the future of social media and one of the topics that came up was RSS. Being the troublemaker that I am, I firmly asserted that RSS as we know it was dead. You can imagine the horror of the 200 plus audience members.

As we dug a little deeper into the topic, I backed off my position and clarified that while I didn't really think that RSS was dead, I did feel like we were nearing the end of the usefulness of RSS readers. Some of my panelists agreed with me (I believe that Sheila strongly objected) but we were able to have a productive conversation about the increasing value of XML feeds (that's all RSS really is) while the value of individual readers was on the wane.

Today, the conversation came up again with a gentleman whose shall remain nameless but let's just say that he is a pioneer in the space and I was pleased to hear that he agreed with me. And while I know at least half of you that read this (all three of you) will insist that you still read blogs regularly via your RSS reader of choice, I'm going to argue that you are a dying breed.

Why do I believe that RSS readers are going the way of the VHS tape? Mainly because they don't really allow for good curation. And by that, I mean that unless I'm reading an RSS feed of blogs that someone I know and trust like David Armano or Robert Scoble have "read" and "liked," than I'm forced to do a lot of hunting and pecking. This doesn't mean I don't like the blogs of smarties such as Joe Jaffe, Valeria Maltoni, Peter Kim, Jay Baer or Tamsen McMahon. It just means that not all of their posts appeal to me (and I'm quite sure the opposite is true). Combine that with the fact that I enjoy discovering new sources of content -- and let's be honest, there are tons of new content creators coming on the scene every day --and you'll at least understand where I'm coming from.

Before you say it, I realize that Twitter alone ISN'T the solution to better content curation. In fact, Twitter can sometimes make it harder to find the right content unless you have the right human filters. I find mine in people like Ann Handley, Lee Odden, Steve Rubel, Amber Naslund, Simon Mainwaring, Brian Morrissey, and Rachel Happe among dozens of others. So what is the solution? I'm not sure. A better Flipboard perhaps? A new and improved Delicious? If you know of one, I'm all ears.

Okay, this is the point where I turn things over and let all you folks that are smarter than me tell me the error of my ways. So comment away my friends. You know I love to be proved wrong.

POST SCRIPT: Here is an audio follow-on by friend and smart dude, Ike Pigott.

And the Winner Is...

Two weeks ago, I kicked off a photo contest on Flickr. We had about a dozen people participate and those people picked some 131 favorites out of the 5,217 that I've uploaded over the past several years. My original goal was to have my friend, Maury Postal (who just had his own gallery showing in NYC), pick the ten winners out of the 131. Unfortunately, after Maury picked his ten it left a three way tie. To resolve the matter I brought in another judge (and master photog) Ken Yeung.

What were the results? Well, I now have over 100 photos that are the cream of the crop. Even better, I have twenty pics that have been hand selected by two semi-pro photographers that I trust and respect. This is what we call curation (more on that topic in a future post). As much as I'd like to think that everyone visiting my Flickr account wants nothing more than to see ALL 5,000+ pictures, what they realistically want to see are the best of my photos. And now I can deliver that to them.

Let's not forget about the most important part and that is the contest winner(s). There were actually two of them: the first was my favorite alien and avid Quick'n'Dirty podcast listener, Howie Goldfarb (aka @SkyPulseMedia). Howie had the most favorites selected (nine out of twenty) but when I went in and looked at how many pictures Howie had favorited during the first phase of the contest, I realized that he may have slightly exceeded the suggested number of ten choices. In the spirit of fairness, I decided that I would split the prize between Howie and Deards whose true identity is yet to be revealed (she picked six of the twenty finalists). That means Howie and Deards each get a $25 gift card of their choosing (iTunes or Starbucks).

Congratulations to the two winners. Thank you to our celebrity judges and a HUGE thank you to you all for participating and making this contest a success. In addition to Howie and Deards, the entrants included: Sheila Scarborough, Jim Storer, Jay Bryant, Darin Kirschner, Steve Golab, Liz Phillips, Tyson Goodridge, Helen Rittersporn and my mom, Martha Strout.

If you'd like to see the winners, the thumbnails are below. Or head on over here to see the final results.