It’s a rare occurrence that I decide it’s absolutely must-have time for a new t-shirt. Come to think of it, it’s pretty rare I decide it’s must-have time for anything. Well, perhaps milk and detergent.
But most everything else I buy happens through accidental shopping. And spending two hours getting to and back from a mall is rarely a scenario that I consider worthwhile. Especially not since getting there often means getting disappointed that they didn’t have anything I wanted anyway. And it’s not just malls, but any congregation of shopping destinations clustered for accidental discovery.
So here’s what I’d like instead. I’d like for every brand in the world to get smart like Threadless. To put every product introduction on an RSS or Atom feed with big, beautiful pictures, and a straight link to BUY. Just like Threadless’ Weekly Announcements.
I’d love to be able to get a brief introduction to all new games from Xbox.com. New pictures from any Puma Speedcat color combinations. Highlights of new taste combinations from Naked Juice. Straight from the manufacturer.
Please. Help me help you. You want my money, I want your new good stuff. Let’s make it happen, m’kay?
Gordon Montgomery
on 16 Oct 06typo: deterrent? did you mean deoderant or was this a North Korean reference?
Dave Rau
on 16 Oct 06Other than super nerds, who the hell uses RSS? Seriously, I wanna know. Does anyone’s mom use RSS? Or maybe your girlfriend/wife?
I just don’t see regular people using it. Even my most nerdy friends aren’t RSS readers; and I know some big nerds!
DHH
on 16 Oct 06Look at the right-hand side of this blog. 31,000-thousand something readers consumed Signal vs Noise through RSS. You’ve got pretty much all the major media providers doing RSS. The entire blogosphere (how nerdy and niche it may be).
It’s baked right into Safari, IE7, and Firefox. I’d say feeds have proven their sustainability. Especially too because they’re so much easier to provide than most web experiences.
eric L
on 16 Oct 06i know exactly what you mean. sometimes i wish everything just came to me over rss. i can help your cool shopping needs a bit. i’ve started a blog (with a FULL rss feed) of cool, affordable bits of clothes and shoes for guys – and every item has a link to buy it from wherever i found a decent stock at a decent price. i started it because i was looking for the same thing as you. if you can’t find it, make it.
Joe Ruby
on 16 Oct 06Everybody the hell uses RSS. But it’s probably only “nerds” who know they are.
Jeff Barson
on 17 Oct 06And… we’re working on it over here in Utah. We’re building that very solution for local businesses. We’ve just launched. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Josh Pigford
on 17 Oct 06We’ve been providing RSS feeds of all our new products since we launched back in January. Definitely a huge plus.
Jon Maddox
on 17 Oct 06I think the question is, how many people are using it that don’t know they are.
RSS is one of those technologies that regular consumers use and have no clue how it works. Which isn’t such a bad thing. How many consumers know that CDs are read by lasers? Just let them ‘subscribe’ and we’ll all be happy.
joshwa
on 17 Oct 06Thinkgeek and Woot do this as well.
LC
on 17 Oct 06David, feel free to pillage our RSS feed for cool men’s products.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/uncrate
Francis Wu
on 17 Oct 06I love RSS… don’t know what I’d do without it. And definitely, I wish it were used more frequently.
I think RSS is one of those crazy underrated technologies simply because people just don’t really get it.
I personally find it hard to explain without getting into the whole “isn’t that like a customizable portal or something?” argument. And when people actually see the feed in action, they’re like, “what happened to the layout and pictures?”
I think only when they will commit to try it out will they truly understand it and see its potential. But until then, they’re not going to make the leap that easily.
Anand Dhingra
on 17 Oct 06This is not a new concept—it’s just a new technology. I receive well crafted emails from L.L. Bean, Franklin Covey, Apple iTunes, BMW, and The Tire Rack. All of these emails can effectively do what Jason is requesting.
While RSS is a better experience, the barrier to adoption by Grandma is still pretty high, even if it’s “baked in” to popular and current browsers.
Grandma learned how to email and surf the web by other people sitting next to her and showing her. The same needs to be done with RSS, regardless of how simple us geeks think it is.
Vera Bass
on 17 Oct 06This is so dead on. A perfect example of the simple and obvious right in front of everyone’s nose.
Not only that, but it’s not the threadless customer who has the most money and least time to go to the mall. I’ve been surprised for a long time that really successful mainsteam catalogue sellers like JCrew have so missed the mark in expanding to the web.
Vera
btw Dave Rau, I’m a RSS equipped mom and could even thoeretically be a grandma since my oldest is 27. I’d guess the largest feed taking group to be 25-35, though. Off to find out.
Josh Santangelo
on 17 Oct 06Sounds like a start-up opportunity to me. Set up a business which accepts product announcements from everyone (there must be some sort of feed format for this—does Macy’s etc really go through everything via physical buyers?), spits it out on a website/RSS for free, and takes a cut of sales.
Can’t be that hard. No one’s thought of this?
j.d.a.
on 17 Oct 06funny I was just thinking this same thing. I just found out that there is a new Beck album out and thought ‘how the hell didn’t I hear about this, I should be able to make an RSS feed to be notified of new albums for artist I choose.’ Sure there’s iTunes weekly newsletter but the svn ratio doesn’t cut it for me.
The more stuff like this that happens, the more likely RSS will be adopted by the mothers, etc. The first step is to get people to understand the difference between blogs and RSS. Telling them that they can their RSS in a service called bloglines just confuses the issue.
FredS
on 17 Oct 06Threadless was cool in 2003.
Ben Darlow
on 17 Oct 06Meanwhile, back on the ranch...
(Note that I don’t agree with the statements the article makes, but a lot of commenters do. Now you can either look upon this as a sign that Digg is frequented by idiots or you can question the ubiquity of RSS. I am somewhere in the middle.)
David
on 17 Oct 06I second that…
Hrmm..
on 17 Oct 06The world needs to know, David. Which shirt was so irresistable?
Matt
on 17 Oct 06We’ve been offering RSS feeds for our stores for over a year now and it’s pretty much ignored. It’s one of my favorite features, but the general public doesn’t get it.
Dave Rau
on 17 Oct 06OK, so I’ve come around in my opinion. Everyone here convinced me.
Resist Today now has an RSS feed of our new products: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ResistToday
And our products are so much cooler than threadless! (Just kidding, we love those guys too.) But we do split profits with our artists 50/50!
nickd
on 18 Oct 06RSS will see a massive adoption after Vista is released because (to my knowledge) the default desktop after a clean install displays RSS very prominently in the right-hand sidebar. Questions about “yeah, but what about everybody else who isn’t techno-savvy enough” will become significantly less relevant then, as I’m guessing it will rapidly become a part of our daily lives.
Early adopters (college students, technologically adept people, etc) already experience RSS through Facebook and last.fm front-page feeds; it won’t be hard for people to make the connection from there.
Vera Bass
on 18 Oct 06wtg, Dave, and the art you’re offering is awesome. Of course anyone who knows how much better analogue is than digital has a mind of their own.
There are plenty of older (25-35) early rss adapters who are exactly the right market to shop from selected feeds, including the ones scanning the morning news with their coffee at 6 am.
Vera
Joe
on 19 Oct 06Good point.. I modified our RSS feed at Tanga.com (http://tanga.com/feed/products). The buy button takes you to a login button currently, which kinda sucks. That will change soon.
Fergus Burns
on 23 Oct 06Just did a blog post on this subject.
More and more merchants are getting Nooked…
Best Regards Fergus
Jake
on 25 Oct 06Newly baked RSS enabled eCommerce design pattern. I would be stoked to get some feedback. Click my name to read the post.
Fure
on 26 Oct 06Large brands do tell us about their latest stuff: it’s called SPAM. Set your SPAM filter to “off” and you’ll get it, as well as 1000 other emails from everyone else selling stuff.
This discussion is closed.