Why RSS is more productive than Web.
I've written about this one before, but thought it might add something to the mix. It's my ideas on why RSS is better than reading in the Web browser.
My goal is to use IE (or any browser, really) as little as possible? Why? Because it is FAR LESS productive to read information in a browser than it is in a news aggregator. Keep in mind, I'm watching 1353 feeds right now. Every night I read all my feeds. That'd be impossible to do in a browser. Here's why:
1) It is 10 times more productive to read RSS than HTML. If you want to read, in a browser, all 1353 of my information sources, which include not only blogs, but MSDN, and BBC, and New York Times, you'd need to visit every single one of those every 24 hours to see if they posted something new. But I DO NOT NEED TO DO THAT. Instead, I only need to look at the sites that have actually posted something. In the past 24 hours only 189 feeds have actually posted something. So, right there I'm 10 times more productive than you are!
2) No wait for browser loading. The average weblog takes 10 to 15 seconds to get to a readable state in the browser. But, my RSS feeds are downloaded ahead of time for me, and when I click on them they load instantly. 15×1353=20295 seconds/60=338.25 minutes/60=5.6375 hours. Am I doing the math right here? If you wanted to pull up 1353 weblogs/websites in your browser you'd be waiting 5.675 hours just to have them load?
3) No looking for “what's new.” When you visit a site like CNET you need to do a lot of mental work to see what was different from yesterday when you read the site. In NewsGator new things are bold. I don't need to do any work and I don't need to pay any attention to old things.
4) No distractions. If you do eyetrak research you'll see that the average human eye spends a lot of time looking at blinking stuff and color stuff (er, advertising on a page and design on a page). In RSS, I only get the content. That means that I can read that content far faster than you can and provably so.
5) Same font for easier reading. Because all RSS is presented in the same font (unless the feed producer is an idiot), your eye can read more without getting tired (imagine if USA Today ran each story in a different font, how hard would that be to read?).