On RSS Stats, Smart RSS, and Getting the Content to the End User
Note from Gary: As I said, every now and then something that directly involves my work at Ask.com. Like I've done in the past I've posted this item in full off of the main page to make browsing easier. Please click to read it, if interested.
About a year ago at SEW Blog posted a couple of items with stats about the use of RSS.
These year-old numbers show that RSS was not as popular or well-known/used as some might think. However, that doesn't mean that the idea of syndicated concept is not useful. Hardly. I think the biggest challenge many RSS devotees are facing is RSS overload. That's a topic for another post.
Well, a year has gone by and some new numbers are out via this post on Business 2.0 that shows a year later that usage and adoption are still at about the same level.
So, where's the Ask.com angle in this post?
Recently, Ask introduced something called Smart RSS. We posted about it here (with examples). With Smart RSS, the three latest postings from a blog (or any other syndicated source) are posted directly on web results pages (what people know). Of course, each post is directly linked to the source as well as a direct post to the blog or content home itself. Not only is this a potential time saver but also a way to turn people on to content they might not know about and also potentially turn them on to RSS in the first place.
Personally, what gets me most excited about RSS Smart Answers is that they're not only for blogs or news sites. No one ever said that RSS was only about blogs and mainstream news. We're only in the early stages but this concept really illustrates to me how syndicated content can be useful. Remember, "syndicated" content means that it can be easily made available in many places. Thast's the beauty of syndication in the first place. Two examples. Someone searching for "fda recalls" is now shown the latest recalls at the top of the page in addition to the regular web results below. The same for "new science books" and seeing the latest releases from the National Academy Press. As I said, this is brand new and a work in progress. Trigger words will change and be modified over time.
I think Smart RSS can not only serve as a:
1) Way to promote syndicated content and RSS as a whole. It could use it.
2) Alert them to content they might not normally know about.
3) Save the searcher time. That's very important.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
