BBC’s feedfactory food for thought on RSS display

The toughest thing about RSS is getting people to use it. And before they’ll use it, they need to understand it. Finally, there’s the user interface issue – how & where to display the RSS feeds available and an explanation on how to use them. Just discussed the last one with the development team at LexBlog today.

Rok Hrastnik at RSS Marketing brought up a new BBC initiative as a possible solution.

One of the key elements of the RSS marketing game is actually getting people new to RSS to subscribe to start using RSS and subscribe to your content.

In this regard, BBC has done a huge leap forward and can serve marketers as real inspiration on how far to go to help their visitors ‘cope’ with RSS. Their new site, thefeedfactory, goes to great lengths to make RSS friendly to their users and really help them get a great RSS experience.

Rok warns not to make the mistake as the BBC: “The front-page really doesn’t give me any quick benefits on why this should matter to me. Why should I care? No easy subscribe features (buttons) for MyYahoo, Bloglines and other online RSS reader services.”

There’s also the approach of wait till next year when people will know how to use those RSS squares or orange symbols.