Monday, January 05, 2004 2:05 PM
The
Boston Globe offers an interesting
article concerning the concept of "push" technologies and RSS feeds. The idea of pushing content to a user rather than forcing the user to go find the content, is a good one, and one that has been around for a long time.
As the article mentions, however, previous attempts to push content had the right idea, but demanded too much bandwidth and clunky client software. In today's world, however, pushing content via low bandwidth eaters, like RSS feeds, to a lightweight client offers new hope to the push concept and perhaps points to the future of information-sharing.
With readers in place, ultimately I would expect that feed reading tools will be built into commonly used client side applications like Outlook, Internet Explorer, etcetera. For now, anyone can easily install readers like Newsgator, with very little time and trouble, and at a reasonable cost.
Ultimately, the question will be how consumers wish to receive and disseminate information. Do they prefer searching the web or visiting their favorite websites multiple times each day? Or do they wish to receive a daily, weekly or monthly newsletter covering the topics in which they are interested? Or would a constantly updated headline feed be preferred? The answer may lie in a combination of the above; in the end, the user will dictate how and when they consume information. Content providers will simply have to be ready to deliver their content via a multitude of streams.
Heading into 2004, old ideas are new again, and push technologies may continue to move front and center.