The Death of RSS and Web Greatly Exaggerated

It seems that with the shutdown of the Bloglines web site, some folks think this spells the end of RSS. And Wired Magazine thinks the Web is dead.  The rise of Skype, Facebook, and RSS are gonna kill it. It seems rumors of demise are everywhere and are also greatly exaggerated.



Yes, iPhone applications, Twitter and Facebook are on the rise. The last two sites are firmly based on Web technology and both offer RSS feeds to tracking account information. Frankly, an RSS feed for a few select Twitter accounts provides a much better way to read the site than trying to watch the fire hose that is your twitter feed. And most of those mobile phone applications are simply custom web applications, nothing more.



Now if you are talking about using your browser on a desktop computer to surf, I think that is on the way down. More and more surfing, buying, you name it on the web, is gonna be done on laptops, netbooks, tablets, and phones. All these smaller devices are gonna have browsers and browsing capabilities much more powerful than desktops have today.



The Web and RSS are not gonna die. But the way we use these technologies is changing fast.