A report issued recently by the Pew Internet & American Life Project tells us that by the end of 2004, 27% of internet users were reading blogs but only 5% of users were relying on RSS aggregators, aka news readers, to read them. That second number should increase substantially because the technology really can be a convenience and a time-saver if you spend a lot of time reading media sites and blogs.

Back in December Kevin Hayden asked for a recommendation on an RSS aggregator, preferably a free one. Since I was interested in the subject myself I decided to look into the current state of the technology, try out some of the free products available and report back. And that’s how a Canadian ends up visiting The American Street. Howdy, folks.

In subsequent comments and correspondence Kevin revealed that he was interested in both web-based services and desktop programs. And I took it for granted that his interest included a healthy collection of blogs, not just news and media sites. I started out with the intention of providing a definitive answer as to which product(s) he should consider. And my definitive answer is: it depends. Don’t you hate it when they do that?

I’ve seen the acronym RSS variously decoded as Rich Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication. Either way, the purpose is the same: it provides a feed from a site whose content changes frequently. Subscribing to that feed provides a way to stay up to date on your favorite sources of news and commentary that saves constantly clicking on your bookmarks only to find that there’s no new content to read. And while �€œsubscribing�€� might sound like it costs money, it doesn’t. It’s merely a matter of plugging the URL for the site’s feed into your aggregator and you’re subscribed.

So in theory you select a reader, set up your subscriptions and you’re all set. But as is often the case, real life is just a bit more complicated than theory.

For starters, there isn’t just one RSS format. There are two different versions of the original RSS standard in common use and I’ve seen signs of a third and older version still in the wild. There’s also a more recent format called Atom which was developed by Pyra, publishers of Blogger, and is already on its third iteration. This may explain why some products have trouble with some feeds and why, for example, version 2.0 of one product I tried couldn’t read a third of the feeds on the subscription list I used for testing but version 2.1, which I downloaded only a few weeks later, had no problem with any of those it previously reported errors on. But it choked on a feed it had previously read just fine. Should you opt for a program that you download and install on your own system, be prepared for the possibility of frequent updates as the standards evolve.

Many news readers offer a built-in �€œbrowser�€� window which would theoretically allow you to read content within the program and never go near your browser. But the feeds from some sites don’t include the entire post, only an excerpt. While you might be inclined to pick and choose the news sites you subscribe to based on those that supply the entire article, you might not want to take a pass on one of your favorite blogs just because its feed only supplies the first few sentences. That means you need a reader that will actually go out and get the whole post when you request it, or one which makes it as simple as possible to launch either the post, or the site’s main page, in your browser.

Add to that the fact that with blogs, the post itself is often far from the whole story. After the post come the comments. And you may well choose to become a participant instead of just a passive consumer. That, too, presents some complications since the commenting systems used with the popular blogging applications work in different ways. A number of products, including some that render HTML in their built-in browsers, don’t provide access to the Haloscan commenting and trackback systems used on many blogs. Either the link is missing or clicking on it yields an error message. A product that might well serve you for reading news sites won’t do the job if you’re interested in the feedback from other readers and can’t always resist the tempation to talk back yourself.

There’s also enough variation in the approach taken by different readers that it’s possible they should be considered as entirely different product areas. And that seems like quite enough complication for one post. Over the next three installments of this series, I’ll be discussing the different categories of aggregators available and supplying some feedback based on my experience with some of them. Part 2 will be along in two or three days and will look at some of the popular web-based services.

But before I go, I should add that there is some good news to offset all this messiness: there’s a format known as OPML which exists for the express purpose of exporting the list of feeds to which you subscribe out of one reader and into another. This makes it much less painful to try out different products since you don’t have to start from scratch and resubscribe to all your favorites in each new program. This is one of the reasons why I encourage exploring this technology even if things are still rough around the edges. Support for OPML should be a minimum requirement in any reader you adopt. (And if you’re the type of person who’s likely to organize his feeds neatly into folders, you should know that not all programs will keep that organization intact when you import. You may just get a single list of feeds and no folders. This, too, seems to be a standard that’s still evolving.)

In the meantime, thanks to Kevin for allowing me to come visit y’all, eh. (You had to know I was going to work at least one �€œeh�€� in there.)