Why Aggregators Matter

Just in case anyone is wondering why I care, other than just having the urge to voice my point of view as a user:

I’m constantly having the discussion with people about why RSS and Blogs and Feeds are so important, why these things are tools to totally subvery the normal hierarchy of mass media, and why they have the potential to be little vehicles for huge sea changes in communication.

So what’s my bestest, brightest, quickest way to demonstate how much information I can receive/organize/comprehend, how specifically suited to my needs, or from how broad a range of sources?

I whip out my aggregator.

It’s a small victory that I got my Mom set up on Bloglines by just setting her up with a list of feeds and spending a few minutes on IM telling her which buttons to push.

The first time I saw an aggregator in action, I said “Wow.”

But not everyone sees all that information and says “Ooh, gimme gimme!”

I, of course, did.

But sometimes when I open up Bloglines, people grimace and say something more like “My goodness, what is all that stuff, and how can you ever keep all that organized?”

Of course, this may all be a moot point when Microsoft ships their RSS friendly IE7 and Longhorn stuff, but for now: I want to hear “Wow, Gimme, Gimme” every time I show someone an aggregator.

There’s a link to my recently-abandoned Bloglines feeds over there on the sidebar somewhere. My Newsgator OPML is here. I’ll set up a page linking to it once I’ve used it for a day or two.