When, a few years ago, it was possible to generate an RSS feed to a blog and alert those who wanted to follow your content avidly when you published, it seemed a big problem was solved about finding an audience.
But technology shifts shapes and is non-linear, and along the way other ways for people to read what they wanted emerged --- Twitter, for example, is a good curation of content via people or organizations worth following, in a kind of grander RSS. Facebook, too, is a personal reader.
So it came as
no real surprise this week
that Bloglines shuttered. Is it, as others like Pluck have found, not a core business any longer to be in the RSS field. Data indicates Bloglines had declined in traffic by nearly three-quarters this year; interestingly, too, Google Reader is down by more than one-quarter (but it has been adding features and shifting focus away from RSS).
What it indicates, though, is how technology is superseded rapidly by new functions and techniques. People find something new and discard what was once seemingly novel.
John Thompson posts on Journalism.co.uk 10 things every journalist should know. It's a great list"
1. That it's imporant to use Twitter.
2. That it's important to use RSS.
3. That link journalism is important.
4. That your readers are smarter than you.
5. That chunrnalism --- simply redistributing press releases --- isn't fooling anyone.
6. That Google is your friend.
7. That many of the new tools are free.
8. That mulitimedia should not be done for multimedia's sake.
9. That journalism needs to be search engine-friendly.
10. That it's important to learn about privacy.
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