Has RSS Usage Killed Off Personal Homepages?
This time last year personal homepages were all the rage, with both big players like Google, MSN and Yahoo! and also small players like netvibes and pageflakes all frantically developing services.
However, it’s rare these days to see any interesting stories break about personal homepages. I wonder, is this because RSS readers have stolen their thunder?
I am almost totally reliant on my RSS reader for my daily surf. My homepages (I use FF2) are gmail and Google Reader. The only other site I visit regularly directly is the BBC, so I have almost no need of a personalised homepage. I do however use Google’s homepage on my work PC, because for some reason it’s the only way I can get into gmail, as the corporate firewall blocks all other access routes.
Are you as dependent as me on RSS? Do you think that personalised homepages will continue to have a role on the web?
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Comment by Thilak on 3 March 2007:
I disagree with you. I still see considerable users using Netvibes or maybe that’s just here in India
Comment by Dimitridze on 3 March 2007:
well, I agree with what you’ve said.. google reader & gmail.. well maybe sometimes livejournal, cos my blog is down at the moment
I look at website as it is only if there’s no RSS feed… but personalised homepages still will continue to have a role, cos there’s still a lot of people who are “afraid” of feeds or just haven’t discovered google-reader yet.. or plainly don’t want to use RSS..
…and you can’t forget users who merely browse the Internet, not surf it
Comment by Everton on 3 March 2007:
Good point. I guess I use my RSS reader and email to guide my surfing. e.g. I’ll read something on RSS or on the BBC which will make me do follow-up searches on Google etc
Comment by Ashish Mohta on 3 March 2007:
To an extent yes.BUt again it depends from user to user.Some of the blogs i like to go and then read but some I do it from RSS.But sooner or later RSS will decrease the page views.
Comment by Patrick Ryall on 4 March 2007:
I agree that it has / will decrease actual visitors, but is it not getting the most important part of the web out there, information your content?
Comment by Everton on 4 March 2007:
I agree. I think the implications though will be that it will become harder and harder for portals to make cash other than by offering search services
Comment by Zath on 4 March 2007:
I know in recent months I have moved more towards the Google Reader + Google Search route - I still have a personal links page to access, but the number of links is reducing rapidly, the main reason its even still there is because Google Reader is blocked at my workplace and delicious doesnt always work.
However, most of my friends who use the Internet still don’t know what I mean when I mention RSS and blogs. Obviously they are much more casual browsers and emailers, but overall I think its probably easier to start a blog of some kind these days rather than a standard webpage, just look at people using myspace.
Comment by Rob O. on 15 May 2007:
I think of RSS as a gateway to my website. Sure, some people probably read the feed and never come explore for more, but my stats seem to indicate that a fair number actually do follow thru the feed to the site itself.
Some folks offer truncated post feeds for the sole purpose of drawing readers to their site to get the complete article. I’d be interested in knowing what others think of this.