As with any evolving medium we learn to use it to maximum effectiveness only with time, rarely out of the gate.
For example, take email. Back in 1996, I was amongst the first vendors to Canadian Tire to get email. They had it back then and I can remember that every two days I would get a joke email from one colleague or another, as they all were discovering the new way to communicate.
Later came spam/junk in its true capitalist form, where we all started receiving the same unwanted mail through electronic means that we have been receiving through print for decades.
And while the buyers stopped the emails because the novelty wore off and their time became more precious than the image of being an “electronic joker”, the advent of “junk mail filters” came into play in order to stop those whom you had no desire to hear from.
And then came blogs. Now whereas blogs are not intrusive by their nature and you basically can subscribe, their “notification lists” are in fact are no less intrusive if you’ve been placed on one without asking. Frankly, I have been guilty of this, as I have often sent notifications of a new blog post, yet recently my thinking has evolved.
For if you or anyone else truly finds what I write to be interesting, then I really need not notify you of a new blog posting. You’ll register yourself to an RSS feed and let it notify you automatically. Therefore, I am hereby deleting my notification list and will no longer send you notices of a new blog post. If you believe that what I have to say is relevant, you’ll simply sign up to the feeds available on the home page of my blog. If not, then frankly it speaks for itself and simply presses me to think about more relevant thoughts to put down in this electronic journal.
Of course, if there’s a sudden flood of “please don’t stop Sass”, I may reconsider…
Sass
3 Comments
I think you make a good point, with an rss feed you get the headlines popping up discretely as an alert on your browser and you can easily review a blog based on the title lines for relavent info. I have opera and find its great for this, my favourite functionality is the feeds list which refreshes every 5 minutes. I have about 20 feeds i keep a track of an read what looks most appealing, MUCH better than bookmarks and not quite as irritating as to many e-mails.
Like a playmate pushing you away because they really just want to get you to say that you need them…
I prefer the email notice of our new postings so that I don’t have to have the disclipline to go find it… Put this into the log of YCPATPATT. Cheers,
Well, I enjoyed getting them. I guess I will need to find out what a RSS feed is. Pls point me to where I sign on. TX