John Jantsch has some insightful commentary on RSS today.  It's a truism that within a group, new words, concepts, and practices emerge and these become to the keys to entry into the group.  RSS this is one of those things for many Internet users.  Does my mom care about RSS?  No, she just wants an easy way to keep up on my blog (I don't think she reads it often ... that's okay because she's busy teaching Sex Ed in the public schools).  I really like these two paragraphs in this post and I think it says it all:

You don't do this by trying to convince someone that they "should" know that this is the defacto standard for an RSS feed. Maybe someday, but I doubt it, will mean something to everyone, but right now it says to some, "I'm a blog snob and this is the only way you can subscribe to my blog so, if you don't know what this is then, go away."

That's like saying to a reader of an ad, we have this long distance number and if you call sometime between 2 and 4 on Tuesday, we'll take your order - would you ever do that? Lower the tech barrier to entry - give them an email contact, web site, toll free number and fax option to place their order!

We have the same philosophy at Qumana for blog editors.  It needs to be dead easy.  You should  just see it and get it.  We're working hard towards that goal, and if you have any suggestions on how we can do it better ... please let us know.

And yes John ... we offer more than one way to get our posts ... including e-mail.

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