1000+ items.  That's what Google Reader told me I need to read to catch up with my RSS subscriptions.  It's intimidating.  My RSS feeds were mocking me. I could see them with sneaky voices "hee hee, you'll never read me, you don't have the time. ha ha."  The sad part is, they were right.

I stopped opening my RSS reader months ago.  It wasn't a concerted effort, I just didn't do it. What I found was that longer I stayed away, the easier it was to stay away.  Returns diminished with each passing day and at some point I gave up on reading anything via Google Reader.  Now, I'm happy to report that I'm back on the wagon (I think that's the right analogy).  My time away gave me some perspective on what I want to read and where I want to read it.

Culprit #1:  Twitter

I was trying to figure out a clever title for this post along the lines of "Twitter Killed the RSS Star", but it wouldn't work.  The sentiment works in my case however.  I have integrated Twitter into my life and I think that it became a surrogate for reading blogs.  Lots of people I follow share their blog posts on Twitter, I have found the relationships that are created to be more personal and it's all so lightweight. Watching Twitter updates gave me the feeling of connection, awareness and discussion that I love about blogs in an efficient and manageable package.  Before I knew it, Twitter had replaced reading RSS feeds.

Culprit #2 Subscribing to the Wrong People

Looking back, my RSS reader has been filled with people I felt I should be reading.  Let me repeat that - should be reading.  I think that's a problem. I felt like I needed to watch TechCrunch to stay on top of tech news. I felt like I needed to subscribe to experts in my field(s).  Sure, these subscriptions were educating me and raising my awareness, but I seriously question the cost/benefit.  Reading them felt like homework - and I don't like homework.

This all came to a head recently when our best friends (and former Seattle neighbors) came to town and stayed with us.  Within a little while, blogging came up and it turned out they had both posted a few entries in the run-up to the trip to Seattle.  I had no idea.  I had to tell them that I stopped reading blogs and I felt bad for not keeping up.  These people matter about a million times more than the people clogging up my RSS Reader and I had let the 1000+items-of-things-that-don't-matter scare me away.

What I Did

Like I've done before, I started over.  I opened up Google Reader, took a nice long look at the list and asked myself - does this matter to me?  Do I even know this person?  Will I be worse off without this content in my life?  No. No. No.  Nearly everything was wiped clean.

When I started adding feeds to fill the void, I did it with a filter.  My RSS reader isn't for news, it isn't for niche analysis, it isn't because I "should".  My RSS reader is now filled with subscriptions to sites that matter to me.  These posts are written by people I know and care about.  They make me feel like reading RSS is a treat - a few minutes spent being with an old friend.

It's only been a little while, but I think RSS may, once again,  become a strong contender for my passive time. Now I can miss a day of RSS reading, open the reader and have Google Reader tell me I have 10 posts to read.  That, I can do.

Apparently, May 1st is RSS Awareness Day! I had no idea such a day existed, but it has it's own site at RSSday.org . Thanks to the nice folks at dailyblogtips.com for making our RSS in Plain English video part of the site - and day for that matter. 

I agree that RSS is one of those special technologies. It has the potential to positively impact virtually every Internet user at no cost. A big problem is awareness - it's hard for people to see how it could impact them until they give it a try. Hopefully we've been able to turn some people on - but there are still about 94% of Internet users that haven't seen the light. The challenge continues.

Here's the improved version of the original video from the Common Craft Store:

Click to play

I remember the exact moment when it first became apparent to me that there was such a thing as an explanation problem.  I was at a small conference on Silicon Valley in early 2004.  There was a CEO of a start up there and during his talk, he mentioned RSS.  Someone raised their hand and asked the question "What is RSS?"

This CEO's responses to the question, and I'm not kidding, was "RSS is an XML-based content syndication format." As you might expect, this was met with a look of bewilderment.

I was in the audience and had an AHA! moment.  It was clear to me that RSS had an explanation problem that was preventing it from being adopted.  Every time someone went looking for information about RSS and found that it was "an XML-based content syndication format" an opportunity was lost.

Since then I've been thinking a lot about explanation problems I'm starting to define them and the problems they cause.  Ultimately, I think it's about adoption - adoption of an idea, a product or service.  Good explanations increase adoption and poor explanations limit adoption.  Here's how I'd explain it in Plain English.

An explanation problem exists when there is a mismatch between what is heard and what matters to the target audience.

Looking back at the RSS example, the question was asked by someone curious about RSS and the answer, while correct, didn't matter to the asker.  The CEOs explanation didn't help them to see why they should care.

An interesting way to look at this situation is by considering how questions are asked.  Often, when someone asks "what is...", they really mean "Why does it matter to me?" By considering what matters to someone, the answer becomes different and more likely to give them information they can act on. 

One of the things that we've learned is that explanation sometimes means answering a different question than was asked. It's not always "what is it?" as much as "why should I care about it?" 

Of course, the example with the CEO is what led me to write this blog entry (a month after the conference) and eventually, this video with Sachi.  

Perhaps some of you may be thinking "Why did Lee make such a big deal about adding del.icio.us bookmarks to his RSS feed and then stop bookmarking completely?"

The answer is that I've been scared to. At some point a few weeks ago, Feedburner's Linksplicer (the tool that adds the bookmarks to the RSS feed) added some goofy characters to the feed and made it invalid - broken in a minor way.

If finally got this fixed (thanks to Feedburner's responsive support folks) and now I'm a little gun-shy. The bookmarked items will come back soon, I just want to make sure my feed stays valid along the way. We all need more validation, right?