Steve Gillmor makes an interesting observation about the uptake of RSS. I wonder what proportion of readers of popular blogs consume them via RSS and how many actually visit the website. This phenomenon coupled with the emergence of the search engine as the user’s preferred entry point further distances people from the browse and aesthetic experience of the target website.
Early adopters of RSS aggregators are spending a greater percentage of their time retrieving RSS feeds instead of browsing websites, and shifting their attention from the onslaught of unwanted corporate spam and e-mail newsletters to the consensual contract of the RSS publisher/subscriber relationship. [The G-spot – News – ZDNet]
