Is An RSS Feed Important Anymore?

Goolge has started transitioning users from Feedburner to its own brand of RSS delivery. After I completed the transition I reviewed the different RSS feeds that are being distributed through Feedburner, and I started to wonder if RSS feeds actually have any value individually.

My reason to question this is I have FriendFeed consuming all of my blogs RSS feeds, my Twitter Feed, my Flickr feed and many other. In essence I am posting all of my content in one location which doesn't require you to subscribe to my individual feeds, only one FriendFeed. So my question is, are RSS feeds becoming a means to display multiple streams of content in a single location, which can also provide a single RSS feed to consume if someone chooses too?

I know RSS has value, but I'm wondering if it has the same value today as it did a year ago. Are you subscribing to as many individual feeds as you have in the past or are you letting social networks help give you the streams you are most interested in?

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While Qik Is A Leap Forward, Mass Adoption Will Be Slow

Jesse Stay wrote a piece for Louis Grey where he asks if Sundance can do for Qik what SXSW did for Twitter. I say no. I'm not saying Qik isn't an important or impressive technology, I'm simply saying Qik doesn't have the reach Twitter did, and therefore won't have as big an impact.

Here are my reasons. Qik is only supported by a small amount of handsets, unlike Twitter, which supports SMS and the mobile web. If I can't get to the content easily, or produce content easily, I'm not going to use it, and I don't think others will either. Most people will have to be logged into a computer in order to see any of the videos created, and that diminishes the purpose of a mobile social tool.

The next issue is technology and infrastructure. Many of today's handsets don't have internet access, and if they do it's not fast enough to handle streaming video. Again this leaves out a vast majority of mobile device owners who can't participate with their mobile device. I realize you can post a link to the Qik video, but I must be at my desktop to view it.

Next I think there is quality problem. I would assume because the amount of data being transfered the compression gives mobile video streaming really poor quality, sometimes unwatchable. For example, when Apple released the iPhone 3G, Jesse was at the Salt Lake City Apple store recording with Qik, but the quality was so bad it was almost impossible to follow. Nothing Jesse did, it was the technology.

I follow Robert Scoble, who is always Qik'ing video where ever he goes. When I'm logged in to my PC, I like to see what he's up to. Qik is great for recording video and sharing on the net, but so is YouTube, and it has a farther reaching affect. If you're lucky enough to have a handset that gives you this power, have fun. For those that don't, we'll have to wait for something truly revolutionary.

Maybe I'm wrong about the lack of wide spread use. But I don't think there are enough techie types at Sundance to give Qik nearly the thrust SXSW gave Tiwtter.

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CNN And Facebook Team Up To Bring Live Inauguration Content

This morning, CNN Live and Facebook have teamed up to bring viewers and interesting mix of video and chat. The layout shows the CNN Live video stream and right next to that your Facebook status updates. This gives viewers who are Facebook members the ability to chat with each other while watching the event. Very cool.

One of the issues facing online news services and social network sites will be capacity. Not only is this an historic day for the United States, it will also be an historic day for online media. There will be more people online, active at the same time, than there probably ever has been.

I would get online early because the closer it gets to the event time the harder it will be to get a feed.

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Props To My Peeps: Darin Berntson And Melissa Ruth

This week I have to give two shout outs. The first one is to Darin Berntson, on Twitter and other places known as Doc, and the other is to Melissa Ruth.

I've gotten to know Darin over the past few weeks, and I really appreciate all the issues he has tried to resolve for me. For one, he came up with a Props To My Peeps logo (which you can see in this post). He has also been able to help me with a few other projects, for which I am grateful. Take a few minutes to learn more about Darin.

Next I wanted to give a shout out to Melissa Ruth. Melissa has helped me with more than one project over the past few weeks. She has always been go to check in on me and make sure I didn't need anything, and quick to help me out when it seems I have a problem.

Melissa is also looking for a job. She has a pretty strong business background. If you can help Melissa out with a potential job, she would be eternally grateful, as would I. You can find out more about Melissa on Twitter too.

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Well The Sabatical Didn't Last Too Long

@JesseStay said I would be back. And he's right. But it wasn't the reason I thought I would be back. So I'm posting on this blog again. Thanks to everyone who gave me some new things to try.

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