Ken Yarmosh – Product Strategist and Technology Connoisseur

According to a recent Pew survey, 91% of Americans are either unsure of or have never heard of the phrase “RSS feed”. It is a pretty amazing stat, considering the growing success surrounding this technology.

Most major news and information sites now have RSS feeds. Microsoft is including RSS support in its next version of Windows. Companies like SimpleFeed focus exclusively on providing corporations RSS services and software. Yet ask a fellow American (who falls outside of the “blogosphere”) about RSS feeds and they’ll most likely say , “RSS what?”

The New Internet is creating a growing technology divide, most evident by Americans’ ignorance not just of how to utilize an RSS feed but more importantly in even knowing what it is. Much like the old adage, “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer”, those who can explain what an RSS feed is, also probably blog and might even subscribe to or have their own podcast.

Perhaps an even scary statistic is that only 67% of American adults are online. So, while blogs, RSS, podcasts, vidcasts, wikis, and other New Internet technologies are growing by the day, approximately 33% of Americans still would not even know how to open up a browser.

Thus for New Internet technologies like RSS feeds to move into mainstream America (i.e., beyond American Internet users having a 9% awareness of them), they must overcome this growing technology divide. The gap can begin to be closed by attacking it from two different angles: usability and education

1. Usability. The New Internet must be simple to use. Technologies like RSS news readers or news aggregrators must be tightly integrated into browsers and not just from a plugin perspective. No additional software installation should be required for these technologies to work. Microsoft (and Apple) understand this concept (last week, Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion briefly examined MS continued interest in RSS development).
2. Education. This element is tied directly to usability. Without the New Internet being somewhat intuitive, educating users on how to use it will be nearly impossible. Think about a friend or family member who is not tech savvy. Explaining how to add a contact to an email address book is often a task. Imagine explaining how to create a blog (or even just how to write a comment on one) or subscribe to an RSS feed.

Businesses and organizations will need to cater to these various groups. They must be aware that the 33% demographic of non-Internet users will be shrinking by the day, while at the same time the percentage of people who have a “good idea” of what RSS is, will also be growing. Until the technology divide is closed, a successful online web presence will meet each of these groups where they are.

And the winner is: blogs. Merriam-Webster recently announced that “blog” was the 2004 Word of the Year, as based on yielding the highest number of user queries. But the word “blog” is only part of what is now often being described as the “New Internet”.

Loosely defined, the New Internet consists of blogs, RSS, and wikis. The average netizen is still quite unaware of the latter two terms. Potential 2005 and 2006 winners? (note: Merriam-Webster online currently does not even contain entries for ‘RSS’ or ‘wiki’).

Beyond the hype and the fact that most web surfers still do not know what a newsfeed is, the New Internet will transform the web. In fact, it is already beginning to do so for two reasons: better content management and better user interface.

Great content and great design are the quintiscencial elements to a successful online presence. Chris Alden, the CEO of Rojo recently stated, “Content is the third ‘killer app’ of the Internet, after email and search.” On the interface side, Ross Mayfield, the founder of Socialtext, spoke to the “social” element of these new technologies:

it’s not so much about the technology, but more about the practice and how it is used in a way that’s actually changing people’s minds and the way they are working. We spent a lot of time developing physical infrastructure, and now we have to develop the social infrastructure on top of it.

And that is an important point. The New Internet does not promise to be like the dot.com boom (and eventual bust), where everyone and their mother thought they could monopolize on the technology behind the Internet. Sure, there is a lot of buzz surrounding blogs. According to Technorati, a popular blog search engine, a new blog is created every 7.4 seconds. To some extent, having a blog or blogging is a fad – when used by the average joe surfer.

Put that blog into the hands of a professor, VP, or SME, and you have a whole different story. That is the point that Mayfield and others are making – that the technology can be used to change “the way [people] are working.” Add to this enhanced user experience a neat and tidy means for content creators to manage their work and that is a winning proposition, on both sides. The New Internet is a recipe for success.