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.

+ July, 2005: Survey Results Show Most Americans Have No Clue About RSS (Results from A Pew Study)

+ Nielsen//NetRatings: 11% of Blog Readers use 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.

On a related note, Ask.com and Bloglines also recently launched a blog and feed engine. As you’ll see, when using the Ask.com interface (both sites share the same database) you’re not limited to subscribing to a specific feed with only Bloglines, another Ask.com service. Ask offers a number of choices including My Yahoo and Google Reader. The same goes for posting and sharing. You’ll find direct links from the results page to share posts using de.licio.us, Digg, and others.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 and is filed under RSS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.