Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Why do companies abuse their RSS feeds?

The RSS feed DUMP for whatever reason is increasingly ubiquitous with corporate websites:


Why does IDEO dump 67 items into their feed at one time? Why is it so prevalent with universities for that matter?

This is HORRIFIC PR. You don't want to flood the market with 27 different items all at the same time, your own content is fighting itself. You need to slow it down, you need to release it in a timely and progressive manner. You need to have a reason to post these items. If nothing else, post 4 a day for two weeks, with each item coming in three hour increments.


My assumption is some schlub in the company is responsible for this, and/or some efficiency expert decided this is best done as a "batch process". FAIL. Don't handle your company's PR and public face as a time wasting event. Treat it, and your subscribers, with respect.

Plus if your goal is to get people to read stuff, they can't handle 67 items all at once.

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