To feed: or not to feed:

I recently had a run in with the feed: URI scheme. As an unsuspecting user of WordPress and Safari, I didn’t realize my RSS feeds were formed using the feed: http:// format, as everything “just worked” since the Safari browser has a built-in support. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case for IE and a large number of other RSS aggregators.

A quick background search on the feed: URI shows that the scheme was published as a pre-draft in late 2003, and you can find it in the unofficial but common URI schemes list. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be any activity to officially register it with a standards body. The supporters of the feed: URI scheme indicate this format makes subscribing to the feeds easier. The opponents argue that the solution is not perfect, it goes against the Web architecture and it is basically a hack. At the end, none of these arguments matter if the client’s aggregator is not supporting the protocol. The process of subscribing to the feed results in a poor user experience, as he/she wonders what happened since not every application reports the ‘unsupported protocol’ message. Based on my late night experiment and research, this negative experience seems to be the norm rather than the exception for many unsuspecting users. It is worth it to note that I am not unfamiliar with Internet technology, and this gave me considerable trouble – the experience can only be worse for the average user.

This experience certainly highlights the importance of understanding the technology adoption for successful and enduring innovations. The technology adoption life-cycle by Moore, and the Technology Acceptance Model, and diffusion/adoption theories (Innovation Decision Process, Individual Innovativeness theory, Rate of Adoption theory, and Perceived Attributes theory) by Rogers are a few models that describe how technology adoption and dissemination occurs. Models aside, here are a few of the common factors that influence technology adoption.

- Technology maturity: for an adoption to occur, there needs to be perceived benefit and value to its adopter. This might include cost benefit, ease-of-use, or better performance, ultimately enabling its adaptor to do his/her job better. In this particular case, there is certainly a perceived benefit of using the feed: protocol, as it makes finding and subscribing to RSS feeds easier. However, it is not sufficient by itself, as in this case the ecosystem support is needed for its diffusion and adoption. Marketing books are full of case studies of superior technologies (remember Betamax?) that lost the battle to lesser rivals.

- Ecosystem support: network effect indicates that the value of the technology to a user increases with the number of total users in the network. Ecosystem for the feed: protocol would require the support of aggregators, upgrades for the deployed software and the client system to specify the usage of the protocol. Based on the difficulty I had with finding proper RSS readers, I would conclude that the ecosystem is not in place for feed: protocol. Also, note that not every web publishing tool is using feed: by default – if that were the case then there would be no argument to using feed: to support aggregators: you either do it or “no soup for you”.

- Technology champions and influencers: pretty much every marketing book discusses the importance of the technology influencers as well as champions. Another well known theory in this area is by Malcolm Gladwell, in The Tipping Point, where he discusses the roles of ‘connector’, ‘maven’ and the ‘salesman’ with respect to human behavior; these are necessary foundations for starting a viral marketing campaign. In the case of the feed: protocol, it is not clear who its champions and influencers are, especially given the fact that there is no progress on pushing its registration with standards body.

- Beware of substitutes: it is always possible that something new will come along as a substitute technology, negating all your development efforts. However, sometimes when a new innovation is a close substitute for an existing technology, then the old technology could also put in the effort to retain its market position. This would also impact the diffusion of the new technology. Since the feed: protocol is not firmly entrenched, it is vulnerable to this type of takeover. Once it becomes a standard (de-facto or ratified) then it will have strength to stand up against newcomers, even if they are somewhat superior.

As an innovator, it is crucial to incorporate your assumptions around the barriers and drivers for your technology adoption and how it will disseminate within your target market. You can utilize scenario planning as a tool to model your assumptions and decisions in order to determine how to maximize your technology adoption and diffusion strategy. After all, the rate that your innovation spreads will dictate the rate that you will start to collect returns on your effort.

So, what is my conclusion on feed: URI? My search through the Internet showed that: 1) none of the sites I visited actually used the feed: URI for RSS feeds; and 2) it was a challenge to find RSS aggregators that supported the feed: protocol. With that, there is no compelling data for using the feed: URI in my blogs. I will gladly reconsider changing back when we are reaching the tipping point for its acceptance.