I am going to be doing some speaking in the next few months about Blogging, RSS, and how they can be used effectively in Marketing and Public Relations. One occasion is going to be at a local user group, the other is going to be an annual conference for a regional PR group.
So, I thought I would pose these questions to the FG nation as an informal poll of some sort. Here it goes.
- Is your job/school of a technical nature (computers, networking, web design, etc.)?
- Do you use RSS to keep up with news and events on the web, or just to keep up with blogs?
- Do you use RSS to keep up with product development from any vendors?
- Do you use a stand-alone newsreader application, or something integrated into another program (Live Bookmarks in Firefox, Newsgator in Outlook, etc.)
- If given a choice, would you choose email updates or an RSS feed?
Thanks ahead of time for responding.
Update: Wow. 66 comments. Definitely more than I expected. I have closed comments on this entry. Thanks for resonding.
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes, Bradsoft, Mozilla, etc
4. Yes, FeedDemon
5. RSS!!!
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes, I keep track of several products, Apple stuff mostly, but my news sites give me information about a lot of new products.
4. Sage on Firefox.
5. RSS.
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes, a couple third party mac vendors (ranchero)
4. Yes, NewsFire
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. Yes (Sauce Reader from Synop)
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Both
3. No
4. Standalone, NewsFire for OS X
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. Mozilla Thunderbird
5. RSS
1. Yes, software design.
2. Both news and events and blogs.
3. I use it to keep up with a couple of open source projects. I don’t want any sales hype in my RSS reading.
4. I use Thunderbird’s aggregator.
5. RSS every time.
1: Yes
2: Both
3: Yes (mainly antivirus/security updates)
4: The Sage Plugin for Firefox
5 :RSS
1. No
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Bloglines.com
5. RSS, always
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes, Apple, etc.
4. Yes, NetNewsWire
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. Bloglines via Firefox plugin
5. RSS
1) Used to be…may be again some day
2) Both
3) Yes
4) Integrated with Firefox or Bloglines (when I’m on the road and not near my own PC
5) RSS – no doubt og that
1: Yes, web development
2: Both (although almost all of the “blogs” I follow are less online diary, more technical/news/political/etc.)
3: Yes
4: Stand-alone (PulpFiction)
5: RSS
1. Mostly no.
2. Blogs mostly (Gmail’s atom feed and a Yahoo Group feed are the only exceptions).
3. No.
4. Firefox Sage extension.
5. RSS please.
1. yes
2. both, mostly news and events
3. yes
4. Bloglines.com
5. RSS all the way
1. Yes.
2. Both.
3. Yes.
4. Standalone. (Net News Wire Lite)
5. RSS. Who want’s to give out their email address if they don’t have to?
1. Web development
2. Both – mostly blogs
3. Yes
4. Stand-alone (FeedDemon)
5. RSS
1. Yes, currently tech support for a state govt. agency. Starting May 1, full time web dev.
2. All of the above. Everything from this site, news, tech news, blogs, musicians, everything is RSS. Though I also visit the web sites of oabout 75% of what I keep up with on RSS.
3. Yes, CMS tools, open source releases.
4. Bloglines Bloglines Bloglines!
5. RSS. Email is too inundated with crap, and the few things I do get there, I never read.
1. Yes.
2. Yup, news, events, blogs, forums, etc.
3. Yup, a few.
4. Stand-alone (FeedDemon).
5. RSS any time.
1. No
2. Both
3. Yes
4. Bloglines
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Both
3. No, although quite a few of the technical blogs and news sites often have this information on (Slashdot, for example)
4. Bloglines
5. RSS, definitely
Yes
Both
No
Liferea
RSS!!!
1. Yes
2. I use RSS for both
3. No
4. Live Bookmarks in Firefox
5. RSS without a doubt
1. Yep.
2. Both
3. Not really. Just what i see in news sites
4.I used to use SharpReader and I liked it alot, but it started getting buggy, grabbing the wrong feeds for the wrong sites and sometimes doing two or three copies of a given site and not doing other sites at all. Switched to the Sage plugin for Firefox.
5. God no. I get something like a thousand emails a day (counting spam, of course), last thing I need is to double that with updates.
1. Yes [although I'm in aerospace ;)].
2. Both.
3. No.
4. Standalone.
5. RSS.
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. No
4. Web-based (newsgator online)
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Mostly blogs (I find using sites like ESPN who update 40+ times a day hard to follow via RSS)
3. Yes
4. Bloglines
5. RSS, a thousand times over
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. I don’t know if any of the software vendors provides an RSS feed. Don’t think so.
4. Bloglines
5. RSS!
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. FeedDemon
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Both (lots of news sites, a few blogs, a few “deal” sites, and of course, ForeverGeek!)
3. Not really, but I might if any of the vendors had anything interesting to share!
4. Live bookmarks and RSSNewsTicker from http://www.rssnewsticker.com/ (freeware). I can’t stand just RSS readers that look like email clients (too much information overload) – I may as well be using email in that case!
5. RSS – email is not a good way to announce things!
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. No (I use bloglines)
5. Both RSS or Atom are fine
1. yes
2. both (anything that i find interesting with an rss feed gets picked up)
3. yes. (google/flickr/redhat for example)
4. integrated (sage via firefox)
5. email updates are so 1995, use rss damnit!
1. Nope
2. Both
3. Nope
4. Sage-Extension for Firefox
5. RSS definitely
1. yes
2. both
3. yes
4. mozilla Thunderbird
5. RSS
1. Yep
2. Both
3. A few
4. NetNewsWire…stays open all day long.
5. Can’t imagine getting all those emails. With all the feeds I subscribe to, that would be in the neighborhood of 1000 emails a day…
1. Yes (Web Design)
2. Both.
3. No.
4. “Something integrated into another program (Live Bookmarks in Firefox)”
5. RSS, no question
1. Yes
2. Both
3. No
4. Sage plugin for firefox
5. RSS feed, no doubt
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. RssBandit
5. RSS
1. Yes. I write about technology for the manufacturing and construction industries.
2. I use RSS for both blogs and web sites that use RSS, to keep with with business as well as personal interests.
3. No, but I would if they offered it.
4. NewsGator, integrated into Outlook, and RSS as bookmarks in Firefox.
5. RSS.
1. Yup.
2. Both.
3. Nope.
4. Feed Demon.
5. RSS.
1. Yes
2. both
3. No
4. Feedreader
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Both
3. No
4. No, I use Bloglines
5. RSS Feed, fo shizzle
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. I use a PHP tool I sort of wrote. (See http://www.freepgs.com/joshdick/news)
5. An RSS feed.
1. Yes
2. BOth
3. Yes
4. Bloglines, so I can read my feeds no matter what computer I’m on.
5. RSS please.
1. Yes
2. both
3. No
4. Klipfolio
5. 100% RSS no question
1. yes
2. both
3. no
4. bloglines.com
5. rss. email gets no love :(
1.Yes
2.|Both
3.No
4. Thunderbird.
5. RSS. I liek to keep email as a social thing “Real mail from real people”
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. Sage (Firefox)
5. RSS feed.
1. Yes, desktop support tech.
2. News but not blogs, don’t realy read them.
3. Yes Firefox but they never update the feed…
4. Live bookmarks and Sage.
5. RSS over email.( what the above poster said)
You are welcome.
1) yes
2) yes, news and blogs
3) yes
4) bloglines
5) feed
1. No
2. Both
3. Yes: Mozilla, Red Hat, and Apple, mostly
4. Bloglines mostly with only a couple Live Bookmarks
5. RSS, definately
1. No.
2. Mostly news, some blogs too
3. yep
4. Bloglines (online aggregator)
5. i don’t really care, but rss.
1) Yup
2) Yeah
3) Yuh huh
4) Bloglines and Feed Demon
5) RSS…I don’t need anything else in my mailbox :/
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. Sage extension for FireFox
5. RSS
1. Yes
2. Both.
3. Yes.
4. Stand alone (FeedDemon)
5. RSS.
1. Yes.
2. Both.
3. No.
4. Firefox.
5. RSS.
1. No – High School
2. Both
3. Yes
4. Standalon, SharpReader
5. RSS – That’s the whole point of it!
1. Retired engineer
2. Yes
3. Yes
4. Use Sharp Reader
5. RSS feeder
1. yes
2. I use RSS to keep up with news and events (and blogs)
3. yes
4. stand-alone newsreader (NetNewsWire; Mac OS X)
5. RSS feed
1. not really (mass communication)
2. mostly blogs (including community/group blogs. is Slashdot news?)
3. no.
4. Live Bookmarks in Firefox.
5. RSS, given the high rate of updates. I still suscribe to e-mail headlines just to keep a copy.
1. At High School
2. I use RSS within Thunderbird for blogs, and Firefox’s live bookmarks for news (neowin, /. etc.)
3. Yes- Trillian.
4. See 2
5. RSS feed
1. Yes
2. Both
3. Yes
4. Bloglines.com
5. RSS feed
1. Yes
2. Just blogs
3. No but I would like to, if it were done well.
4. bloglines.com
5. RSS
1. Yes.
2. Blog.
3. Nope.
4. RssReader on Windows, NewsNetWire on Mac
5. RSS all the way!