Subscribing to books

I'm not sure if I missed it before (it was hard to find), but my local newspaper now has an RSS feed. Over the past few weeks, since I subscribed, I've read more local news than I ever have in my life. The RSS feed changed my behaviour.

Before we could easily subscribe to websites through RSS there was still already a huge wealth of interesting websites to devour. But it was easier to subscribe to a magazine or newspaper and get it delivered through your letterbox. Subscription made that easy.

For a while I embraced the nearest online equivalent: email subscriptions. But I found I received more product offers than original and interesting content. The hassle of subscribing and unsubscribing, and the risk of spam, also made me reluctant to give out my email address to random websites.

RSS solved those problems. And it changed the way I use the web.

These days, any website that doesn't provide a subscription feed is more or less ignored by me. I'll visit once, then I'll forget it exists. There are a couple of exceptions, but few.

That said, I'm finding myself developing websites for clients who aren't going to update their sites very often. An RSS feed in this situation would be like asking someone to subscribe to a book.

The temptation is to believe that sometimes subscription cannot be implemented.

Some temptations are bad for you.