BeigeJournal

I read Dave Slusher’s insight about David Coursey a while ago, the one in which he says, “he is like a street whore expressing incredulity about and contempt for those who would have sex for fun,” and I finally heard the interview he was referring to a week or two ago. That is a memorable way of describing it. Coursey seems remarkably down on the possibility that people would write or talk (or presumably, sing, paint, photograph, or code) for fun, even though it’s pretty easy to find lots of examples of people doing exactly that. I think though, that he really missed the point of RSS, and that feeds into it.

I think he used the New York Times as an example, saying that, sure, you can get an RSS feed, but why not just go to the web site with your web browser? I agree: for the purpose of just plain reading, an RSS feed from the NY Times, or Boing Boing, or CNN, or any other site that gets updated constantly, is not a really a big added value. If you wake up and wonder what the Times has to say, sure, just go to the web site. I guarantee they will have something up there that wasn’t there yesterday. What the feed is really useful for are the amateurs who only write (or record podcasts…) when they have something to say, which might not be very often. If I have to remember to visit Joe Intermittent Blogger’s site to see if he’s written anything yet this month, eventually I’ll forget about him, but I can keep dozens of very occasional feeds in Bloglines, or in my podcatcher, and every now and then a nugget of goodness will appear from someone who doesn’t say much but who I always want to hear from.

The whore thinks servicing thirty-five guys every night is too much work for anyone to do for fun. The professional radio guy thinks the minimum any one person can do is four hours of morning drive-time-radio every single frickn’ day, and no one would do that just for fun. If you had a broadcast radio transmitter and only turned it on for a half-hour a week at unscheduled times, you would not have any listeners. If you put out a podcast every other week or so, it is entirely possible for people to put your feed in their software and receive your show. There have been four “Live from the Formosa Tea House” podcasts in the history of podcasting so far, but I really like them all. I wouldn’t want to miss any of the occasional “Really Learn Spanish” podcasts. The feeds are in my podcatcher, and when something new is posted, I get it automatically. It’s not some sort of terrible burden on me that happens on an infrequent, irregular basis. You don’t have to put out 12 hours a day every day just to keep people from forgetting about you.

The vision of a bright podcasting future is not a thousand insanely dedicated people each putting out 8 hours a day, it is a million normal (kind-of) people, each putting out what they can.