Ramanujan Redux

Seth Godin seems to be right on more often than not, and I think he’s starting to take on an edge. More and more the Internet is being cluttered with many, many things. However, I don’t think that’s the fault of the Internet. I think that’s just us tech geeks taking the Internet to the extreme.

My RSS feeds are huge, and I certainly only read about ten or twenty. But let’s face it–how many of you actually read your RSS? How many of you actually have RSS?

As much as I enjoy finding new information, new pictures, new sources of data, unless they add something to my life, their appeal is brief and illusory. The only time RSS is probably useful is if it’s current events (politics, sports, entertainment), or if the site is really really good (Umair Haque and Godin are two examples). I think connecting with people will require something separate (RSS 2.0?).

I don’t have it in my head quite yet, but information is one part of the Internet experience, and that’s the only thing RSS does a good job taking care of. It needs to be minimized to what you care about (basketball and football for me, celebrities and their crappy lives or politicans and election results for others) so you can make room for what really matters.

Time to prune that RSS feed now.