Newspapers and RSS on the Go

September 28th, 2006

Robert Young at GigaOm posted about Rupert Murdoch’s likely move into blogging to complement the social networking hit MySpace… I think that is inevitable.

Robert talks about the challenges facing the newspaper industry and how blogging is one of the major disruptors.

“Simply put, it’s centralized content production and distribution vs. decentralized people media. I have now learned, first hand, how blogging competes with traditional newsprint reporting and publishing.”

There is one point that Robert doesn’t address with respect to blogging’s threat to newspapers.  I was riding the bus to work this morning and of the 50 or so people on the bust I’d say 15 or so were reading the newspaper.  One person was consuming RSS – that would be me and I was using NewsGator Go! of course.  Mobile consumption of RSS is critical to blogging’s ultimate success and ubiquity.

There are several options for consuming RSS on the go, Bloglines Mobile, Dave Winer’s River of News, mobile formatted blogs like Engadget, etc.  My favorite is NewsGator Go! - I am a bit biased suprise… suprise… like a newspaper, when I am done reading articles in NewsGator Go! those articles are purged (if I choose) from NewsGator’s RSS synchronization engine and will not show up when I get to the office and fire up FeedDemon.  That synchronization is absolutely critical to my mobile RSS experience.

Regardless of your choice for consuming RSS on your mobile device, please spread the word.  If those folks on the bus could get the news they wanted when they wanted on their mobile devices, I am sure they would have not bothered buying the old school newspaper.  This is good for the RSS space and good for you the consumer!

Entry Filed under: Mobile